


Laundry Day

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-25 18:18:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18266840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: This is a sequel to a much longer previous work,Sanctuary.  You're welcome to read if you don't feel like wading through that 100K angst-fest, I just don't think it will make much sense to you.  Hal and Bruce continue to negotiate married life and Hal's challenges, is the one-sentence summary of this story. Sanctuary will tell you exactly what those challenges are.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not anywhere near as long as Sanctuary, I promise -- it's a brief window into the world of "what happens next." It's self-contained, and there are no complicated confusing plot elements, other than the terminal complication and confusion of how to live with someone you love while also going through your own shit. I found myself poking at the universe of Sanctuary in my head, spinning it out some more, because I was dissatisfied with where I left it, which is to say, I think I left readers with the impression of "Hal is fine now and everything is great and he's completely at peace with his body and things are perfect." None of that is true. Or rather, the thing about chronic illness is that all that can be true one day, and then not true the next. There is no continuous emotional trajectory, any more than there is a continuous physical trajectory, and that shit is fucking exhausting. I've heard. 
> 
> Finally, this is the rare instance where a work's final title is the same as its working title. I stuck with Laundry Day because laundry is the driver of the plot (such as it is) and because I liked the metaphor of what a laundry day is -- getting all your shit out where you can see it and sorting through it and taking care of what needs taking care of. And like laundry, that shit is not a one and done kind of thing, but a continual process, and that's some of what I want to convey as well: that negotiation of a relationship is never-ending, and is its own kind of exhausting, but at the same time packed with so much joy there are times you can't hold it all in.

If he hadn’t been so weird about his laundry, none of it might have ever happened.

“Look, it’s just weird to me, all right?” he said to Bruce. “I’m a grown-ass man, I do not need someone doing my laundry for me.”

“I see,” Bruce said, replacing his coffee cup on its saucer without raising his eyes from his tablet. “So it follows that people who don’t do their own laundry are infants.”

“That. . . is not what I said. Not even a little bit.” 

Bruce’s brow twitched upward, but that was all the commentary he offered. “Look,” Hal said. “I would just feel more comfortable doing my own laundry. I don’t see why it has to be such a big deal.”

"I’m not the one investing laundry with moral significance.” He took a bite of toast. 

“It’s not moral significance! I just think Alfred has better things to do than picking up after me, is all.”

“You understand Alfred does not actually do the laundry himself.”

“I. . . what do you mean?”

Bruce looked up for the first time. “Hal. You’ve lived here for a year now. This house is enormous, and it is regularly inhabited by anywhere between four and nine people. Do you honestly think Alfred is the one doing all the cleaning for a house of this size? Has the occasional presence of housekeepers entirely escaped your notice?”

“Oh,” Hal said. “Huh.”

Bruce squinted at him with that look that said _how are you even possible_ , and then went back to his breakfast. But still. It just bothered him, was all. He could take living in a mansion, he could handle all the trappings that went with being married to a billionaire, but this one thing was, as it turned out, the hill he was prepared to die on. He would not, could not, let someone else do his laundry. 

Of course, that was easier said than done. His bedroom – Bruce’s bedroom – okay, _their_ bedroom, was on the third floor, and carrying a heavy basket of laundry down to the first floor laundry room had a tendency to overbalance him, especially when he was wearing the brace, and he wore the brace all the time now. The first time he tried it he tipped over in the elevator, and he lay there athwart the door of the elevator for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling and reconsidering his life choices. Lucky for him no one had been home but Titus, who had helpfully bounded in to bathe his face in drool while he was lying there. But then he had gotten the idea he could maybe haul himself up using the dog. That had gone okay until Titus had caught sight of a squirrel out the side windows, and gone hurtling forward, and Hal had crashed to the floor again, and bruised hell out of his shoulder on the hard tile of the hallway.

“What happened to you?” Bruce had said that night, when he had seen the ugly bruise on Hal’s shoulder. Bruce was propped in bed reading and making notes, his glasses perched on the end of his nose.

“Football injury,” Hal said, and when he had glanced over, Bruce’s eyes had been grave. But he had said nothing, and gone back to his papers. 

So after that he took smaller loads downstairs. He got himself a mesh sack and just got in the habit of bringing his laundry downstairs every morning, to keep it from piling up. If it were smaller amounts, he could handle it just fine. Lesson learned. Only, that was a system that depended on Hal keeping up with things, and he wasn’t always excellent at that, and inevitably there would come the morning he realized he didn’t actually have any clean shirts, and so he would do what he tended to do in those situations, which was duck into Bruce’s closet to go scavenge something from there.

Bruce’s closet never ceased to amaze him. It was secretly his favorite room in the Manor, the truth was. It was like this giant hallway that extended from the bathroom, and at the end of it was a whole little room, with a round velvet kind of thing in the middle to sit on, and mirrors everywhere, and basically it looked like the dressing room of some 1940s film star. There were leather-lined cabinets with cufflinks in them, and a whole case for watches, and glass-fronted shelves for the ties. 

“You ever think it’s weird,” Hal had asked him, when he had first seen the closet, “that you have all these clothes, and yet I’ve only ever seen you wear the same black turtleneck?”

“It’s not actually the same black turtleneck,” Bruce had said, and then Hal had seen the rack of designer black turtlenecks, and laughed. Anyway, he liked Bruce’s closet. It was kind of the most peaceful place in the house, and the one place he could guarantee no one would come looking for him. Once, Carol had needed like a ten-hour turnaround on some specs she had sent him, and the house had for some reason been full of Bats and Bat-adjacents, and Hal had holed himself up in Bruce’s closet to work. Bruce had found him there at the end of the day.

“What in God’s name,” Bruce had muttered. Hal was sprawled on the floor, his laptop and papers strewn across the lush carpet, bags of barbecue chips scattered about. 

“It’s quiet in here,” Hal said. “Plus it’s got really great lighting. You ever thought about putting a fridge in here?”

“How about I get you your own closet?”

“Nah, I like yours fine. Besides, I don’t have that many clothes, I can just share a rack in here or something. Ooh, look at your face, you really don’t like that idea, do you. When the only child in you comes out, it’s something to see.”

“There’s plenty of space in this house for each of us to have his own closet. And who knows, at some point you might acquire grown-up clothes and expand your wardrobe beyond jeans and sweatpants.”

Hal crunched a barbecue chip, and watched Bruce wince as chip bits crumbled onto the carpet. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “mainly in my life I have worn flight suits and the Lantern uniform. I haven’t had much need for civilian clothes beyond your basic pair of jeans. Am I. . . I dunno, does that bother you, or something?”

Bruce came and sat on the velvet bench. He stroked Hal’s head. “No,” he said. “Wear whatever the hell you want, don’t pay any attention to me.”

Hal tipped his head back into Bruce’s lap and shut his eyes, let Bruce pet him. “You’ve been working too hard today,” Bruce murmured, leaning in to kiss his eyes. 

“Nah I’m okay. Gotta bring home the bacon if I’m gonna support your expensive tastes.”

“Mm. Are you doing this work for Carol because you enjoy it? Or because you somehow think you need to?”

“I mean. . . this kind of engineering review is not exactly the dream of my life, but it’s not bad. It gives me some money of my own, and I like that.”

The hand stroking his head paused, and then resumed. “You have a great deal of money of your own,” Bruce said.

“Okay, let’s not have this fight again. Not that the last seven times weren’t A Number One Fun.”

“Who’s fighting,” Bruce said, brushing a kiss against his cheekbone. 

“Hey Bruce,” he murmured.

“Hmm.”

“You ever fuck in here?” 

“In my closet?”

“Yeah. I’m just thinking, all these mirrors. . . it might be kind of sexy. I could stand to see you naked and sprawled on a velvet pillow.”

“No, I have not had sex in my closet. And you’re just deflecting anyway.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said as Bruce got up and began loosening his tie, taking his things off. When he took off clothes he just tossed them aside, on a chair or wherever. A lifetime of knowing that someone else would come along and pick up after him. Hal crunched another barbecue chip and thought about how much that pissed him off. 

“So I’m gonna have to be gone for a bit,” he said. “Kilowogg got in touch with me earlier. The Corps wants me to be involved in training new Lanterns. It’s not fieldwork, obviously, but there’s a lot of good I can do for the Corps that isn’t fieldwork.”

Bruce’s back was turned. “When are you planning on leaving?” 

“Tomorrow, actually. They need me as soon as possible, Kilowogg said.”

“And you don’t think this is a way of back-dooring you into fieldwork?”

Hal bit another chip. “No. But thanks for your concern. It’s not at all patronizing.”

“How long will you be on Oa?”

Hal didn’t answer. Bruce finished pulling on his t shirt and sweats and turned around. He must be planning on training down in the cave tonight. Bruce glared at him. “And you’re not answering because you don’t actually know, and you don’t know because you didn’t ask, and you didn’t ask because you leaped at the chance to be gone and didn’t much care what the terms were.”

“I leaped at the chance to do something useful,” Hal said quietly. “To be a Lantern again.” He struggled up from the floor, which was ungainly and awkward and embarrassing and the opposite of what he was going for. 

“Hal, that isn’t what I—”

“We’re not actually talking right now, asshole.” And he stalked out of the closet, or would have stalked out had his gait not been so stiff from sitting on the floor. It was hard to walk angry when your walk was more of a hobble. 

He spent the rest of the evening in the library, pretending to do important research. Fortunately for him, his extra laptop was also stashed in the library, so after he had watched his nine thousandth hedgehog video he fell asleep on the criminally soft sofa. Alfred had built a fire while he slept. It was unsettling, that he had slept through that. He used to be such a light sleeper. The old military instinct, both from the Air Force and the Corps. It freaked him out that that was gone now, and he hadn’t even been off active duty a full year and a half. Of course, it wasn’t just that he had been off duty; it was that he was so tired, and tired all the time, and being tired had become his normal state, and it didn’t even feel strange to him anymore. Sleeping through someone making a fire was a depressing marker of difference from the way he had been.

The door thunked shut, and Hal sat up, rubbing at his face. “Do you want dinner in here, or are you still having a tantrum?” Bruce said, standing at the door. 

“I don’t know. Are you still being an asshole who assumes my desire to do my job means I am somehow bailing on my family?”

Bruce came and sat down in the chair near the sofa. He sighed heavily. “It is possible I did not. . . express myself entirely well, when we spoke earlier.”

“No I think you expressed yourself really well, actually.”

“Hal, I didn’t—”

“You really think that I am ‘leaping at the chance’ to leave? Is there some part of you that secretly really thinks that, that thinks I don’t want to be here, that I don’t want to be married to you, that my whole life is just something I’m looking to ditch at the first opportunity? Really? Because go fuck yourself, if so.”

Bruce was studying the back of his hands. “I don’t think that,” he said quietly.

“Bull fucking shit. There is some secret part of you that thinks I am just itching to push the eject button.”

Bruce rubbed at an invisible spot of dirt on his hand. “Maybe,” he said.

“You motherfucker.”

Bruce looked thoughtful. “What,” Hal said. “Jesus Christ, what. Say what you want to say and stop sitting there looking at me like that.”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“And allow me to once again call bullshit on that one.”

“All right, how about this. I don’t have anything to say that isn’t going to cause you to explode at me.”

“Well excuse me for having an emotion in your presence.”

Bruce rubbed at his eyes. They sat in silence for a minute. Hal’s chest was still thudding with anger. “A little fucking support would have been nice,” Hal said. 

“You have my support,” Bruce murmured. “Just not my trust.”

The blood drained out of Hal’s face. He could feel it wash down his body. “What the fuck did you just say,” he said through numb lips.

“I don’t trust you to know your limits. That’s what I don’t trust. I see how much you want this assignment, and I watch every day while you push against the limits of the possible in your body, and I watch you miscalculate every day. And that miscalculation is one thing when it’s carrying your laundry downstairs, and another when you’re flying through space, and for God’s sake do you not see the difference there? Do you not know what is at stake here? Is it really just impossible for you to see this, are you that—”

And he broke off and rose abruptly, going to lean on the mantel, staring into the fire. Hal watched him. “In the best case scenario,” Bruce said, his voice quieter now. “In the best case scenario, you come home broken and exhausted, with damage that will take weeks, possibly months, to undo. Do you know what it’s like to watch you? It’s like watching a bird hurl itself against glass again, and again, and again. Waiting for a wing to break, or a neck. Christ, Hal.” 

Hal studied his knotted hands, because if he took his focus off them for one nanosecond, he was going to lose it. Gripped his hands together until the knuckles were white. “I miscalculate every day,” he repeated, keeping his voice as quiet as Bruce’s. Quieter, even. A thread of sound. “That’s what you think. In the first place, here’s some new news for you, the limits of the possible, as you call it, changes from day to day. That’s a fact. So if I miscalculate some days, maybe it could occur to you, you infinite fucking asshole, that maybe that’s not entirely my fault.”

“Hal, I’m not—”

“Yeah, not done yet,” Hal said, and he got up from the sofa, he didn’t care how ungainly he was. “Because how the fuck do you look at my life and see anything _but_ someone whose every fucking waking second is a calculation? How the fuck do you not see that? I spent my day working on motherfucking engineering specs because I _do_ know what I can do and what I can’t do, but that doesn’t really fit with the way you want to see me, does it? Because you want to see me as some brainless irresponsible jackass, because maybe that’s what makes you feel like you’ve got all the answers, or maybe that’s just what gets your cock hard, I really don’t know.”

He had kept his voice as calm and still as he could. Bruce was still not looking at him. Still bent to the mantel. The room was wrapped in silence.

“I ship out tomorrow,” Hal said. “I was hoping to spend tonight here, with my family. With you. But it looks like that is not such a great idea. So I’ll be on the Watchtower tonight. I’ll see you when I get back, I guess.”

He paused at the door of the library, his hand on the knob. “And next time you look me in the face and tell me you don’t trust me, you better think really fucking hard about that one.” He didn’t even try not to slam the door behind him, but let its satisfying reverb echo down the hallway. That was one thing about living in a gigantic-ass house, was how it took slamming doors to a whole other level.


	2. Chapter 2

So that was how he spent the night on the Watchtower for the first time in at least a year, and it was funny how quickly you forgot what non-rich people mattresses felt like. He lay there on his stiff board of a bed that had always felt fine before and stared at the ceiling. He was half-expecting a ping on his communicator. At least something. They yelled at each other all the time, it wasn’t a big deal. He told himself it wasn’t a big deal. But he hadn’t slept anywhere but in a bed with Bruce since they had gotten married, and fights had usually resolved themselves in a matter of hours. 

Hal stared into the dark and felt every one of Bruce’s words like a needle in his skin. _Broken. Exhausted. Damage. Just not my trust. Miscalculation. Just not my trust._

Had he by chance left some liquor stashed in his rooms, last time he was here? Because drunk would feel pretty good right about now. 

Of course, he could reach Bruce on his communicator. It wouldn’t have to be anything big. But damn he was so fucking pissed at Bruce. It was funny, he had thought falling in love with Bruce and marrying him would mean that he didn’t really get mad at him again, or at least, not like he used to get mad at him – back when he had thought Bruce was nothing but a raging asshole. But all the things he used to feel about Bruce, as pissed as Bruce used to make him, was nothing to what he felt now. 

But he did in the end pick up his phone. “Hey,” he said, when Oliver answered. 

“Hey man, what’s up?”

“Nothing much,” Hal said. “Shipping out for a little bit, heading to Oa to help with some training. Listen, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, hit me. Is this about level eighteen on COD Modern Warfare? Because that level was some sick shit, took me like a week to get through it. I can see if I can find some playthroughs though.”

“No, this is not about Call of Duty, this is about—actual shit. Can you—I just want to ask you an actual question, all right?”

“Well all right, no need to get pissy at me.”

“I’m not pissy, I just—look. What’s the maddest you’ve ever been at Dinah?”

There was silence on the line. For a minute he thought Oliver would laugh him off, or make some joke. “Pretty mad,” he said after a bit. 

“Was that—was that before you got married, or after?”

“After,” he said.

“Is that. . . is that normal, or something? Because I would think that after you marry someone, you know them pretty well, right, and you. . . I mean you love them and shit, so. . .I dunno, I was just wondering if also wanting to pound their head into a bloody pulp was a normal thing.”

Oliver gave a low, long laugh. “Uh, yeah, pretty normal there Hall-e-o. That’s what we would have to call par for the course my man.”

“Huh,” Hal said. “So what did Dinah do that got you so mad?”

“Shit I’m not gonna tell you about.”

“Oh. So like, serious things? Not just, she forgot to take the garbage out when she promised she would kind of shit?”

“No Hal, not that kind of shit.”

Hal was quiet, listening to the gravity of Oliver’s voice. “Did you ever think about leaving?” he said.

“Yep.”

“Did she say she was sorry?”

He heard the long exhale on the other end. “Okay,” Oliver said. “So, look, there’s some stuff you might not know. There’s some marriage-type wisdom I’m about to lay on you.”

“Look Ol, I don’t really need—”

“Shut up,” Oliver said. “You’ve been married for about three and a half minutes, so for once in your life you’re gonna shut your smart mouth and sit your ass down and listen. You should apologize. No no no, this was not an invitation for you to speak,” he said, riding over Hal’s protest. “You’re still listening. But if you’re playing the Apology Game, then you’re gonna lose, all right? There’s only one way to win the Apology Game, and that is to go first. You have to apologize.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Hal said, through gritted teeth.

“Yes you did.”

“You know jack shit about it, Ol.”

“Right, cuz I know jack shit about you. Look, you gotta let go of this whole idea of someone being right and someone being wrong, my man, because odds are you’re both wrong. And what matters more than an apology is understanding why someone did something.”

“The why of it doesn’t matter,” Hal said, his jaw still tight. He heard more of Ollie’s low laugh on the other end. 

“Oh man, this is gonna be fun,” he sighed. “It’s like watching someone drive straight at a brick wall at about seventy miles an hour. You seriously think being right is the most important part of any fight, you are dead in the water. Why don’t you go ahead and sign those divorce papers right now, if that’s what you think. You gotta figure out why you’re fighting, is the important thing. No scratch that, that’s the important thing _after_ apologizing. That’s the part you gotta do first.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said that’s bullshit Ol. No way am I doing that, not after what he—look. It will be a cold day in hell before I say I’m sorry for trying to do my goddamn job. He’s waiting for that, he’s gonna have a long wait. I’m on assignment, so he can suck it.”

“I see. Well you let me know how that works out for ya.”

“Yeah, thanks for all the support.”

“Sure thing, asshole. So quick question about this whole ‘doing my goddamn job’ self-righteous hose job you got going on, this assignment you’re on right now, any chance you discussed that with Bruce beforehand, or was this just a ‘I’m gonna go do this thing now, see ya’ kind of situation?”

“Our lives don’t work like that,” Hal said. “And fuck no, I’m not asking someone’s permission to walk out the goddamn door.”

“It’s not asking permission to talk to your team about what the play is, you dick.”

“Jesus Christ, I cannot believe you are not on my side here. Is it so much for me to ask for a little fucking support from _anyone?_ Or does everyone in the entire universe believe I am just so fucking incompetent that I can barely drag my disabled ass to the front door? What the fuck, man. I called you up so you could be my friend, not my second-grade teacher.”

“This is me being your friend, only your head is too far up your ass to recognize that. And by the way if Bruce called me I’d be singing the same song to him, not that he would.”

“Whatever,” Hal said. “I have to go. Just—I’ll call you when I get back.”

“Okay man. Stay safe out there.”

“Yeah you too,” he said, and clicked off.

The thing of it was, it got easier. That first night he was away, the night he called Oliver, he had been raging and hurting. But after that, it was easier. He had a job to do, and he did it. It was easy to push down thoughts of home and concentrate on what he had to do. And it felt good – felt better than good – to be back on assignment, to have things to do, to know that someone out there in the universe had a decent opinion of his abilities. At least someone thought he was worth something. Someone looked at him and saw something more than somebody broken and worthless. 

The one thing he would not allow was for Bruce to be right about pushing himself too hard. So he was even more careful than usual about expending his energy, and when he needed to rest, he rested, even if Kilowogg thought it was weird. He was proud of himself, too, for not giving in and messaging Bruce. Let Bruce message him, if he wanted. Bruce was the one with things to apologize for. But Hal did check his messages maybe a bit more frequently than usual, especially those first few days. Any messages would have to be routed through deep-space systems, and those weren’t that easy to access, even on the Watchtower. So it wasn’t like he really expected to get a message. But it was possible; if Bruce really wanted to get in touch with him, he could probably find a way. 

He was doing fine with pushing down thoughts of Bruce and home, until he had a bad morning, about two weeks in. Woke up and felt the stiffness all through him, and the impossibility of moving. It had been a while since he had had a morning that bad. He lay there and closed his eyes and tried to will it away, along with the feeling of sinking hopelessness that went with it. The worst was the way it reached into his gut and clawed at him there, the emptiness. 

It had been a couple of months ago, last time it had been this bad. 

He had awakened later than usual, for him, which had been his first clue that things were wrong; normally he was awake with the dawn. But not on bad days. He only woke that morning when he felt Bruce moving around on his side of the bed, heading to the bathroom, all his quiet morning noises. Hal just lay there, unwilling to try moving. Maybe if he pretended he was still asleep. 

After a while the bed next to him dipped down, and there was a hand resting on his shoulder. “Is it bad,” said Bruce’s voice, the quiet one, and for some reason Hal felt flooded with rage at it. He had to swallow it down, he was so angry.

“No,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I think I just have a cold. I’m gonna sleep it off.”

Silence from Bruce at that one. Hal rolled over the other direction, away from him. He would not try to get up until Bruce was out of the room. He could feel Bruce’s presence at his back, just lying there. _Get the fuck out and leave me alone,_ Hal thought at him, and after a few minutes he could hear Bruce get back up, hear him pull on his clothes. And then he heard him standing there. 

“I can have Alfred send up some of his cold remedy,” he said. “I wouldn’t inquire too closely what’s in it though.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hal said. “Probably just allergies.”

“Of course,” Bruce said. “Allergies.”

There was something in Bruce’s voice at that, something with an edge to it. Hal lay still, kept his eyes closed. He waited until the door clicked shut before he tried to move, and even then he stifled the groan as much as possible. He made it upright and then hit the floor, but the carpet was thick and lush and broke most of his fall. He lay there, stiff and soaked in self-pity, and then hauled himself up and tried again. He had ended up using a construct just to get himself to the bathroom. 

They hadn’t talked about it, after that. Hal had spent the rest of that day in bed, and Bruce hadn’t returned, and by the next day he was feeling better again. It hadn’t been mentioned again. 

But something about that day made it easier, the next time his muscles were having a shit day – or the next time he miscalculated and fell, or any one of a hundred small things. It made it easier not to have to talk about it. If he didn’t talk about it, it could just be not happening. He had gone alone to his next appointment with Leslie, didn’t even tell Bruce about it. 

“We should talk a bit more about progression,” she had said gently, and he had clenched his jaw and stared resolutely at the wall behind her desk. 

“Let’s not,” he said.

“I’m concerned about your spine. Progression into the autochthonous dorsal muscles is the worst case scenario, because of the integration with the spinal nervous system, and I think that’s where we are headed right now.”

“I’ve been wearing the brace,” he said. "Just because I forgot today—"

“And that’s great, for your leg. But there are other supports we can try that might mean your spine can work a little less hard than it is right now. Some of your exhaustion is probably because of—”

“I have to go,” he said, standing up. She had sat at her desk and just looked at him. Leslie was blunt and sharp-tongued at the best of times, but that day she had just looked at him. 

“Hal,” she had said, and the gentleness of her voice had infuriated him. 

“Yeah, I’ve—got a thing,” he had said, and had walked out, walked straight out of the hospital and went not home, but to the nearest bar. He sat there and drank a few beers, and considered switching to something stronger. Considered slipping his phone out of his jacket and calling Bruce and saying _yeah so I just had an incredibly shitty appointment with Leslie and I’m day drinking right now, wanna come join?_ But Bruce’s sympathy was as nauseating to him right now as Leslie’s gentleness. He stared at his beer and sat in his booth and drank in tight-jawed silence. 

It was late in the afternoon, getting on towards five, and the bar was far from empty. There was a young woman perched at the end of the bar, angled so he could see her from his booth. She kept glancing over at him. His right hand was closest to her, not his left. Or maybe that wouldn’t have mattered. 

“Hey,” she said, leaning into his booth. Wow, she was younger than he had thought, even. “I’m Adrienne.”

“I’m drinking alone,” he said. 

“I can see that. Interested in fixing that?”

“Nope,” he said, taking another swig off his beer. 

“Bad day?”

“Well, it’s been kind of a year.”

“Yeah, I know about those.”

“You’re too young to know about those, and too young to be hitting on some asshole you don’t know at a bar. Who’s married.”

“I don’t see your wife.”

“You’re persistent,” he said. 

“And you’re incredibly cute.”

He studied the label on his beer. It was nice to hear, was the truth of it. It was the sort of direct approach he himself had favored, back in the day, and he had favored it because it was so effective. But even more than that, it was nice to hear it from someone who didn’t know about any of the things wrong with him. He could probably take her back to her apartment and fuck her; almost definitely he could. It was the first time since getting married that such a thought had occurred to him, however fleeting. He wouldn’t act on it, of course, but in three seconds his brain had played out the whole thing, right down to what it would feel like to fuck a woman again, and how hard he would probably cum. A little surprising, how ready to go his brain was. Or maybe that wasn’t the organ to be worrying about.

“That’s the face of someone who’s thinking about it,” she said.

“It’s the face of someone who’s still married,” he said. “Also, that’s like four nos in a row, Adrienne, so if you’ve put together your approach from watching the dudebros at Sigma Theta What The Fuck, you might wanna reconsider.”

“Jesus, no need to get rude about it.”

He gave a short laugh. “Always nice to spend time with twenty-year old me,” he said. He pulled out a five from his wallet and slapped it on the table, sliding out from the booth. 

It was probably just the flight jacket; that did tend to do the trick. He headed to the door of the bar. It was a double entry, warding off the cold like most of the older bars in this area of Gotham, and the doors were about seventy pounds each. He pushed through the first set of doors, and he was in the little area between the first and the second one when his leg gave. It wasn’t a bad one, and he recovered quickly. He grabbed at the handle of the door, and righted himself, but he had definitely crashed into the wall a little bit there, and he hated himself that his first thought was _really hope Persistent Adrienne didn’t see that._

“You’re scum, Jordan,” he said, heading out the outer doors to his car. It was what he deserved, for forgetting the brace after he had showered. What else had he expected? 

He fucked Bruce hard that night, and rough. There was nothing wrong with being rough; they both liked it that way, from time to time. Only thing was, that was usually an invitation-only event, and he had definitely not asked. But Bruce hadn’t stopped him, which he could have.

“So,” Bruce said afterward. “Not a great appointment with Leslie?”

“It was fine,” Hal said. He was lying there staring at the ceiling, still breathing hard. Of course Bruce would have figured out he had an appointment, even though he hadn’t told him. Probably a fucking tracker in his car. Had Leslie told him? No, she wouldn’t do that. Like a thin knife sliding under his skin, he heard the hiss of that voice: _keep you under surveillance._

“So fine you felt like taking it out of my ass?”

“Can we please just. . . not talk about it,” Hal said, shutting his eyes.

“Isn’t that what we do?” Bruce said. Hal said nothing. After a while Hal felt the bed shift as Bruce got up. He stayed like that until he heard the shower running, and then he rolled over and pulled the covers up.

* * *

The morning that it was bad on Oa, he lay in his hard narrow bed in his quarters and thought about the last time it had been this bad. How he had lied to Bruce about it then. He thought about Leslie, about everything in the last few months. He messaged Kilowogg and told him he would not be joining them for training exercises today. And then he reached for his deep-space communicator and stared at it. He composed the message in his head.

 _I just want to hear your voice,_ was what he wanted to say. _I fucked up and I’m sorry and I love you and can we please not be mad at each other anymore, I can’t take it._

 _Hey,_ was what he wrote instead. He stared at it. And then he backspaced the three letters, until it was just a blinking cursor. 

“Fuck,” he said, setting it down. He closed his eyes and tried to settle into the exhaustion, which worked better than fighting it. If Bruce were here right now he would probably be telling Hal that this was exactly what he had known would happen, that he couldn’t be trusted to know his own body, that anyone could have predicted this, that he was an idiot for thinking he could ever accomplish anything, ever be worth anything. _What did you really think would happen?_ Bruce would say. _Isn’t this exactly what I said would happen?_

He rolled over and wrapped himself in the blankets. No, that wasn’t right, Bruce wouldn’t say those things. Bruce would hold him. Bruce would kneel beside his bed. He would say _sweetheart, sweetheart_ in that soft voice, and Hal would drop his heavy head on Bruce’s chest and let himself be held. Bruce would stroke his hair. Even better, Bruce would work on his muscles for him, and he didn’t want to think that was part of it – that as much as he had been relying on his meds, he also relied on both physical therapy and Bruce’s hands on him, and maybe that was why things had gotten bad now. He hadn’t thought about that before, how often Bruce’s hands were on him. It had come to seem natural, just part of what they did, whenever they were sitting down – Bruce’s hands would stray to his quads, quietly working on him while they talked. Or in bed, Bruce would work on his spine. Anything to keep those muscles from knotting. 

Fuck, he just wanted Bruce so much. It was worse when he was sick, he knew that was it. It turned his insides into jello, hollowed him out inside, made it hard to think, hard to be rational. But Bruce didn’t want him. Bruce didn’t trust him. There was some hard crust forming over his heart, and he couldn’t make it stop.


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce zoomed in on the map he had thrown up on the monitor and narrowed his eyes at it. He tapped a few keys and brought up the first overlay, and then the second. Then the third. There was a pattern here, if only his eyes could find it. He rested there in the blue wash of the monitor, letting his brain settle in to the data, assimilate the patterns. _Hold it loosely in your mind,_ he was always telling Tim. _Don’t press it, or hurry it. Let it rest there, and you will see._ But tonight the data was so many dancing points of nonsense, and his brain was sluggish. Not to mention exhausted. He rubbed at his eyes and tried again, trying to relax into the center of his core, to even his breathing. If he could shut out enough distractions, quiet all extraneous noise. . .

“Hey there,” Clark called, trotting down the stairs from the house. He set all the metal stairs to rattling as he came down because as always he moved with the grace of a baby giraffe someone had fed a bucket of tequila, and Bruce rubbed at his eyes again. 

“What’s up,” Clark said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. 

“Working,” Bruce said with tight jaw.

“Oh, interesting! This is that provenance map you were looking at the other day?”

“Yes.”

“Any progress?”

“Not so far. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Nope,” Clark said cheerfully. “Just thought I’d stop by. Actually, I was hoping for a date to the Knights game tomorrow night, but Hal keeps not answering my texts, so I thought I’d corner him. He around?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. He head into town today?”

Bruce flexed and unflexed his fingers in the gauntlet. “No,” he said. “He’s a little bit further afield than that.”

“Oookay, how much further? He head up to the Watchtower?”

Bruce turned back to his map. “I need to concentrate on this.”

“Is there some reason you’re not telling me where Hal is? Is he planning my surprise party or something? Because I appreciate the gesture, but look, I don’t want anyone to make a big deal over this, it’s really just one more birthday as far as I’m concerned.”

Bruce’s hand paused over the keyboard. “It’s not anywhere near your birthday.”

“And how would you know?”

“Because your birthday is. . .it’s. . .”

“You genuinely have no idea when my birthday is, do you.”

“To be fair, that date is not your actual birthday.”

“Yeah, it really is an outrage that I’m allowed to have a birthday at all, you’re right. You know the problem with you being a jerk ninety percent of the time is that it’s hard to tell when you’re being a jerk for a reason and just being a jerk because that’s who you are, but I’m going to go with the first choice there because of the conspicuous absence of Hal. What’s going on, B?”

Bruce stripped off his gauntlets and laid them on the monitor table. “He’s on assignment,” he said shortly.

“Oh. Okay. Well you could have just said that, unless my security clearance was downgraded when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t know he was feeling up to doing that kind of work these days. He must be doing pretty good, huh?”

Bruce said nothing, and returned to his data. But Clark had a way of not getting the message when he didn’t want to, and he pulled up a stool and sat beside him, looking at the map too. “This is really interesting,” Clark said, studying it with a frown. “You feel like some help with this?”

“Well if a kitten crops up that needs rescuing, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“I’m going to guess Hal’s been gone about ten days,” Clark said, “because you’re at defcon-5 jerk level, and we haven’t been there since you were getting regularly and seriously laid.”

“I have to work,” he said, his jaw so tight it was beginning to spasm. 

“Sure you do. But you also have to eat and sleep, and it looks like neither one of those is happening. When is Hal getting back?”

Bruce said nothing, just clicked through a different set of maps and started again with the overlays. “B,” Clark said quietly.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s on assignment, and you don’t know when he’s getting back. Bruce, what the hell is going on?”

He pushed his chair back from the screen, and wiped at his face. He closed his eyes, rested his exhausted head on his hand. “I don’t know,” he said.

Clark was quiet. Say what you would about him, Clark did occasionally know when to shut the hell up. Bruce picked up his gauntlets again and studied them, rubbing bits of non-existent dirt off them. It occurred to him Clark would just sit there all night, waiting for him to talk if he wanted to, not asking any more questions. Just sitting with him. 

“He hasn’t been. . . talking to me,” Bruce said. “For some time now.”

“That’s a rough place to be.”

Bruce felt his throat tighten. “Yes,” he said. “Well, in my case, probably an inevitable place to be. I’ve fucked it up somewhere, I’m just not sure where.” It was like the data points on the map; if he could just concentrate enough, he could see it. He could locate the pattern, try to resolve it. 

“You know, it’s possible you didn’t.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It just means, not everything that happens is because of you. Hal is going through a lot right now, and. . . that’s gonna have an effect on everything he does. That’s all I mean.”

“Ah yes, how could I forget, Hal is going through a lot,” Bruce said, and even he could hear the bitterness in his voice. “I’m never allowed to forget it. It might interest you to know, Hal Jordan is not the only person who has suffered in the history of the world, though he probably believes that. I’ve broken my goddamn back, and lain in bed unable to move, facing a lifetime of pain. I certainly found it possible to interact like a human being.”

“Yeah, you were great,” Clark said softly. “Anytime you want to encounter reality about what your recovery was like, and how awesome you were to be around, I’m happy to help out.”

“Be that as it may—”

“No, I’m sorry, no,” Clark said, cutting across him. “I’m sorry, I know I usually do this thing where I listen to you complain about how unreasonable the rest of the world is being, but I’m sorry Bruce, just no. No. Yeah, you’ve been injured before, and yeah, you’ve faced disability before, but in none of those cases were you ever going to get _worse_. You ever think about that? As bad as it was for you, that was as bad as it was going to be. Hal is living in a completely different world from that. Things _are_ going to get worse for him, and that’s _not_ the same as anything you’ve been through. So maybe stop being such a self-righteous horse’s ass about it.”

Bruce turned to his screen, his back to Clark. His chest was thudding with anger, which he knew Clark could hear. But because unlike Clark – and some other people he could name – he was not given to fourth-grade emotional outbursts, he said nothing. 

“But you’re not going to listen to a damn word I’ve said, are you.” Clark sighed. “Okay, whatever. Well, if you want to talk about it anymore, you know where to find me, I guess.” 

He heard Clark get up and start walking back up the stairs. How the man managed to make just as much noise going up the stairs as down them he had no idea. A good thing stealthy approach was rarely a skill Superman needed. 

He stared at his monitor for some time after Clark had left, though he could no longer even see it, really. In his head, he fantasized about chasing after Clark, throwing him up against a wall, explaining to him exactly how much he had put up with from Hal recently. Of course, none of that would fit with Clark’s preferred narrative of ‘Bruce is an emotionally incompetent fuck-up,’ not that Clark would say fuck, among his other annoying midwesternisms. 

But if Clark wanted a list, he could sure as hell provide it.

The worst wasn’t when Hal started going to appointments with Leslie without telling him. He understood that; he was a private person himself, and Hal deserved whatever space he required. It wasn’t when Hal began covering for his falls, telling small inconsequential lies to divert attention from them. Bruce would probably have done the same. It wasn’t even when Hal had begun seeming more and more absent during sex, or less and less aware of Bruce’s presence, might be a better way to put that. They both had high sex drives, and insistent bodily needs, and it wasn’t like he expected (or wanted) every sexual encounter to be full of heartfelt declarations and sentimental eye contact. That just wasn’t what they did; they got each other off on a near-daily basis, and that didn’t always come with profound emotions attached. 

Except the night Hal had gotten rough with him. Bruce had gotten up to go shower afterward, and just leaned his head against the tile, his eyes shut. He hadn’t stopped him. Hadn’t tried. Because a part of him had known that Hal wouldn’t hear it, and another part of him had thought, _let him, he needs this, what does it matter?_

So yes, maybe it had been the sex a little. 

But the worst of it had been the morning Hal had pretended he wasn’t hurting. That was when he had truly known how many doors had been slammed shut, when he had felt the full measure of it. He had realized how much pain Hal was in, of course he had known. For one thing, Hal was still lying in bed. And then, the way he was holding himself, the way he always did when it was bad – so still, like any movement was impossible. Like he was lying there weighted by concrete blocks, suffocating under them, and Bruce had wanted only to rip those blocks off him, to cradle him, to hold him. But Hal had turned his face to the wall, and lied to him. The lie had felt like ice in Bruce’s veins. It was just one lie too many.

He had stood outside the bedroom door, after he had closed it quietly behind him. Pressed his hand to the door. Everything in him had wanted to push the door open, walk back into that room, kneel by Hal’s side of the bed, pull him into his arms. _Let me in, let me in,_ he would say. _I won’t let you do this, won’t let you travel somewhere I can’t reach. Let me in, let me in, sweetheart let me in._

But Hal would turn glassy eyes to the wall and just shut him out again, and the pain of seeing that would be more than he could take. And then. . . and then, a part of him had thought, well, he’s the one who pushed me away. There was enough pride in his spine that he wasn’t going to go crawling to someone who didn’t want him. Who shut him out. Who lied to him, repeatedly. 

So fuck Clark. Clark knew nothing about it. Clark always thought the best of everyone else and the worst of him, and he was sick of it. 

_He technically left you,_ said a small voice inside him. _Who knows if he’s coming back? It wouldn’t be your fault if you sought a little comfort somewhere else. No one could blame you for that._

There were a hundred numbers he could call, and he knew it. But he pushed down the voice. Not out of any moral rectitude, really, but out of pride. Doing that would just give Hal the right to feel aggrieved, would make Bruce less right and Hal more right, and that was intolerable to him. 

He clicked off his monitor and kicked his chair back, stripping himself of the rest of the suit as he went, draping it over chairs. He would sleep down in the cave tonight. A few hours’ rest, and then he could be back at it. Enough of letting his emotions rule his productivity this way. But he lay in the bed in that darkened windowless womb of a room, and stared sleepless at the ceiling, his exhausted eyes refusing to shut for long sleepless hours. He should take something to help him sleep, he knew he should. It was Clark’s irrational behavior of earlier, that was the problem. Why was he letting Clark get to him like this? Clark didn’t know what he was talking about, so the thing to do was to ignore it. Ignore him. 

Throwing his recovery back in his face like that. Clark didn’t know. He couldn’t know. There was nothing in that omnipotent, invulnerable brain that could possibly comprehend what it had been like to lie in that bad, day after day, facing the rest of your life like that, ground into helplessness. Clark couldn’t know the terror of that, or the—

He sat upright, kicking off the covers. 

The terror.

It was all he had felt, every day. And at first he hadn’t even known what he was feeling, not really; true fear like that was so unfamiliar to him. Fear that this would be his reality, that day and for the rest of his life. Fear that it would never get better. Fear that he would have to learn to face life like that. Fear in every inhale, fear on every exhale. 

What would it have been like, if the fear had been fear not at a possibility, but at a certainty? 

_Things are going to get worse for him._

What would his own admittedly testy interactions have been, in that long-ago recovery, if all hope had been erased? If he had known, for certain, that things were going to get worse? Along how many edges would his personality have frayed, what would have become of him? 

He saw Hal lying in their bed that morning, crushed into immobility, his jaw set against the pain. Eyes steady and unseeing. And then he saw himself, choked by pride, offended at the pettiness of all the lying, turning his back on him, walking away from him down the hallway. Away from that closed door, and Hal lying behind it. It was an agony of a memory, a hot fist in his gut, and he got up and pulled his clothes back on, splashed water on his face, anything to push away the shame of that memory. No. No more of this. 

There were things he needed to do, calls he needed to make. He needed to sit down with Leslie first and foremost; that was going to be the most important thing. And then there were conversations he should have with Dick. . . though that was only the beginning of a thought, and could possibly wait. 

Hal would come back, or he would not, but one way or the other, Bruce would be ready for him.


	4. Chapter 4

He ended up staying on assignment for eight weeks, and not once did he speak to Bruce during that time. Not once did Bruce speak to him, for that matter. He came back to earth late one night, and headed home, but no one was there. Well, Alfred probably was, but it was two in the morning. No sign of Bruce, or of Damian – probably off Batman-and-Robining somewhere. He hadn’t actually thought that he would come home to an empty house, though he should have realized that would probably be the case. 

So he fell into bed and pulled the covers up and surrendered to the exhaustion, and toward dawn he stirred and saw that Bruce was lying in bed too. He could see the tousled shock of dark hair on the pillow next to him, and he was so close to reaching for him, so close. Just to touch him once. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. 

He hauled himself out of bed and made it to the bathroom, downed some meds. He should pull on some clothes, but of course he hadn’t done laundry before he left, so he ducked into Bruce’s closet to grab something, the way he had a thousand times before. 

And that was when he found it. 

He would never have seen it, even, if he hadn’t been rooting around behind a rack of turtlenecks, but he was cold – temperature regulation was also sucking balls in all directions these days – and so he had been flipping through the rack of heavier shirts, looking for something he could steal, when his hand had hit something hard and metal behind the rack.

He pushed back the shirts and saw it.

“The fuck,” he said. He stared at it, unable to believe what he was seeing. 

He dragged it out, dragged it through the bathroom, marched back into the bedroom with it. “Hey asshole,” he said, loud enough to wake him. The dark head reared up, squinted at him. “Yeah you,” Hal said.

“Oh good,” Bruce groaned, his head dropping back onto the pillow. “This sounds fun.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Hal said, and he swung onto the carpet the wheelchair he had dragged out of Bruce's closet.

That had Bruce’s attention. “Hal,” he said quietly.

“No. No you do not fucking get to ‘Hal’ me. That is what you do not get to fucking do. Jesus Christ, what the fucking hell did you think you were doing? You think you have some right to do this?” He was shaking with rage, and even in some dim part of his brain, he was aware he was not being entirely rational, but he couldn’t stop it. 

Bruce was sitting up now. “What I thought I was doing,” he said, “was preparing to help you in any possible way.”

“Because you think _that’s_ where I belong, because you want me to be some huddled wreck in a fucking wheelchair that you can push around and feed crumpets to? Is that what you want here?”

He saw that land home, saw it in the clench of Bruce’s jaw, but he felt nothing but a sick glee at it. “You need to stop talking,” Bruce said, his voice low and menacing.

“Or what, Bruce? You gonna come at me? Go on, give that a try, I will fucking level your ass and you know it. You tell me what the fuck you were even thinking, hiding that fucking thing in your closet. Were you just hoping I would come crawling home barely able to move, is that your fucking wet dream? That’s what you want, I know,” he said, and God, he heard the words spilling out of his mouth, but he was powerless to stop them. All the rage that had built up, all the things he hadn’t said, all the fury dammed up in his body, it was spilling out like blood, like a fucking hemorrhage, and he couldn’t stop it. 

Bruce had gotten up and was pushing past him to the bathroom. “Enough,” Bruce muttered, and Hal had shoved him before he had even known he was going to do it, shoved him hard, enough to make him stagger back. 

Bruce stood there frozen, arms half-upraised, as though only by holding his arms very still was he restraining himself from striking back, and the sight of it enraged Hal more, because he did not need Bruce’s fucking restraint. He shoved him again, harder. 

“That’s all you’ve ever wanted,” Hal spat. “From the second you met me, you’ve hated my power. Fucking hated it, and wanted to control it, and you couldn’t, and then all of a sudden you could, and I was sick, and it was your dream come true. And now you can’t wait to get me in a fucking wheelchair. You can’t wait for it, because all you want is for me to be broken forever.”

He was shaking, but he didn’t even know if it was rage anymore. The bedroom was quiet, and in the quiet Hal heard every word he had just hurled at Bruce. 

Not his words. Parallax’s words. 

_I’m saying words from the deepest darkest part of you._

_If there is one true thing in this world, it is that Bruce Wayne loves a broken thing._

_From the deepest darkest part of you._

It had never been what Parallax thought. It had been what he thought. What he still thought. “Fuck you,” Hal said, with shaking voice. He kicked the wheelchair. “Fuck you, and fuck this fucking thing, and fuck you for going behind my back like this!”

“Because a conversation about it would have helped?” Bruce said. His eyes were level on Hal. “You’re not capable of a rational conversation about where you are. You’ve been lying to me for months, hiding how much pain you’re in, hiding any progression from me, and why? For what, Hal? So you can tell yourself I’m the enemy, that’s why, so you can hate something and someone beside yourself, because you are so consumed with self-hatred you can’t even breathe around it.”

“That’s a fucking lie!” Hal shouted, and he picked up the wheelchair – what do you know, those motherfuckers were heavier than he had thought – and he hurled it across the room with as much force as he could manage. It landed on top of furniture, on top of something breakable, and there was the satisfying sound of shattered glass, of splintering wood. 

“That’s a fucking lie,” Hal said again, hating the shaking in his voice. Bruce was advancing on him now, Bruce was going to unleash and hit him, and God it would feel so good, it was all he wanted, he just wanted that release, wanted to feel the rush of a clean true hit, because then he could hit and hit and hit until he didn’t have to feel anything anymore.

“Come on you son of a bitch, come at me,” he yelled at him. “Come on!” And he got his hands back on Bruce, shoved him again until his knees hit the bed this time, only now Bruce closed his hands around Hal’s wrists so he couldn’t push him again. 

“You let go of me,” Hal growled. “You get your fucking hands off me or you will regret it.”

Bruce released his wrists then, dropped his hands. “Go on then,” he said quietly. “Go on and do what you want to do.” And Hal stood there, chest heaving. He had already formed the fist. He was ready to crash it into the side of Bruce’s face, and Bruce was going to let him. It would feel so good. But somehow his hand was shaking. No, that wasn’t his hand. It was all of him. Every part of him. 

Bruce was the one to raise his hand, and Hal steeled himself to the blow, knew he deserved it. Bruce raised his hands to Hal’s face, only somehow he wasn’t hitting him. There were hands on his face, shaking fingers. “Sweetheart,” Bruce said, and Hal opened his mouth to scream but it was an inhuman sound, he hated the sound coming out of his mouth, and he couldn’t do it anymore, he couldn’t.

“Sweetheart,” Bruce said again. 

“Fuck,” Hal gasped. He wasn’t sure how any of it happened. He didn’t know how he was suddenly on the floor, and in Bruce’s arms, and sobbing like a fucking baby. It wasn’t even like sobbing; it was like vomiting, like all his internal organs spilling out in a writhing agony. 

And the things Bruce was saying, as he was holding him: _my love, my sweetheart, hold onto me, I’m here, I’m here, my love, my love._ Hal shook like he was being spitted, and he tried to say words but couldn’t. He didn’t have enough air for words. Bruce’s arms were the only thing holding him together. 

“I can’t do it,” Hal gasped, finally finding air. “Oh fuck I can’t do it. I told Parallax I could do it, I told him I didn’t care, but oh fuck I can’t do it, what do I do, what do I do, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

Bruce’s arms around him just held him tighter. And he didn’t tell him that he could do it, didn’t tell him he was stronger than he knew, didn’t say any of the bullshit that would make Hal scream. He kissed Hal’s hair, his forehead, his face, his hands. “I don’t know how to do this,” Hal said. “I can’t do it, I can’t, what the fuck do I do, tell me what to do, I can’t.” 

“Maybe you can’t,” Bruce whispered, and Hal sobbed in a wild paroxysm of agony then, buried his face in Bruce’s bare chest. He dug his fingers in, and Bruce held Hal’s face to his, rocked him through it.

“But listen to me,” Bruce said. “Sweetheart, listen to me. I think that we could.”

“I. . . what do you mean,” he choked out.

“I mean, maybe you can’t do it. Maybe you can’t face it. It’s too much for anyone to face, too much to ask of anyone. But together, we could. If it was you and me together. You and I, when we’re together, we’re an unstoppable force. There isn’t anything we can’t do.”

Hal lay there, emptied, exhausted, momentarily stunned. “I don’t. . . understand,” he said.

“I know,” Bruce said, and there were lips that brushed at his hair. “You never have, not really. You’ve lived your whole life without needing anyone,” he said, and Hal thought of words Bruce had said so long ago, he couldn’t even remember when. _Isn’t alone the whole point of you?_ And he had thought that that way of thinking was behind him, that he wasn’t like that anymore. But the second things had gotten worse – the minute shit had really gotten real, he had fallen back into thinking like that. He had shut Bruce out so hard. He had slammed every door, because it was him against the world, just like it had always been. 

“You know what I hate,” Hal said hoarsely. “Besides me,” he said, and Bruce gave a short laugh, and Hal choked a laugh too. “I really fucking hate it when you are the emotionally competent one in this family.”

Bruce stroked his head, and Hal let himself sink a bit more into that broad chest. Let himself get air into his lungs. “Well,” Bruce said. “It’s a rare enough occurrence in my life. Let me enjoy it.”

He didn’t know how long they lay there. Could have been hours. It probably was. He could still feel the shaking in his limbs, or maybe that was just the exhaustion kicking in. “I have to do it, is the thing,” Hal whispered at last. “I don’t have a choice.” The sun was bright in the bedroom now, striping the bed, the wreckage he had made of the room, the two of them huddled against the wall. 

“Do what, love,” Bruce murmured.

“I have to be able to do this, for Damian. I can’t. . . I can’t let him see me fail at this.”

Bruce tucked Hal’s head under his chin. “I see,” he said. “Because you somehow think parenting is not letting them see you fail?”

Hal thought about that one. “Okay,” he said. “That’s. . . a fair point.”

“Do you have any idea how often Damian has seen me fail?” 

“That’s different, he’s gonna love you no matter what.”

“But not you, is that what you mean?” 

Hal was silent. “You idiot,” Bruce sighed. 

“It’s not just about him,” Hal said. “It’s just that I’ve never. . . ”

“Never what?”

“If I say it I sound like an asshole.”

“Jordan I already know you’re an asshole, go on and say it.”

“Okay fine. I’ve never been afraid. All right? Not really. Not like normal people, I guess. I don’t get afraid, it’s just not how I’m wired. I’ve never been afraid, and now I am, and I am fucked up about it. I am all kinds of fucked up.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of . . . me. My body. Afraid that I can’t do the thing I said that I could. Afraid of. . . a lot of things.”

“What other things?”

Hal was silent, and Bruce shifted underneath him. “Hal. What else are you afraid of?”

“You need me to say it?”

“Yes.”

Hal shut his eyes. “How long,” he said dully. “How long do I have. How long before I have to look at you and see that you’re with me because you promised to be with me, but that all you feel is pity, and compassion, and disgust? How far away is that day? Because fuck, I can’t—I don’t know if I can—”

He swallowed hard, worked to steady his voice. “I won’t be one more obligation in your life,” he said. Still Bruce said nothing.

“And now you’re even more pissed,” Hal said. Bruce sighed, and they sat there quietly for a bit more. It was okay. At least he had said it. And what really was there for Bruce to say back to him? Bruce had probably already been thinking it. Probably already been calculating how much longer he could take it. 

“I went to see Dick while you were gone,” Bruce said eventually, and Hal wondered if this was going to be the thing they never talked about, if this was Bruce changing the subject. Just one more thing to submerge and not talk about, ever again.

“Okay,” he said. 

“I went to see him because I wanted to explore with him the possibility that he might do for me what he did once before, when I was gone. He was Batman before, and a good one – better, probably, than me. I talked to him about the possibility of doing that again, but on a more permanent basis.”

Hal sat up then, and looked at Bruce. “The fuck,” he said. Bruce shrugged.

“Well it’s an inevitability sooner or later. I won’t be able to keep this up forever. It’s just a matter of timing, really. So I wanted to see if that was something he would be interested in, but more on the sooner side instead of the later side.”

“How soon?”

“Immediately, if he wanted.”

“You. . . want to quit Batman.”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why the fuck would you want that?”

“Because I want other things more,” he said simply. “Because you and I have challenges ahead, and I want to be fully present for those. I want to be with you.”

“Jesus Christ, I cannot believe what is coming out of your mouth right now. Bruce, you can’t do that. You can’t—holy fuck. No, just no. You can’t _quit_ Batman. You _are_ Batman.”

“That’s what I thought too. Before you, that’s what I thought. I couldn’t have conceived of it, because I never saw myself as separate from Batman in any way. Hal. Is there anything in you that can understand, you’re not an obligation in my life. You _are_ my life.”

Hal just looked at him. There was no more pretense, nothing but the two of them, sitting quietly on the floor, looking at each other. Bruce’s hair was still a mess from sleeping on it. He looked so beautiful. “You’re mine,” Hal said. “You’re my life too.”

“Do you believe me?” Bruce said, and Hal looked at him. It was like when they were on the island, and Bruce had crawled across the bathroom to him and grabbed him and said _why the hell do you think it’s any different for me?_ and for the first time Hal had entertained the possibility that Bruce felt for him what he felt for Bruce. Kind of disappointing that this was something he was going to have to keep re-learning. His learning curve on this was more of a flatline.

“I believe you,” Hal said. He had never meant anything more in his life. 

Hal leaned back against the wall, and they rested there, heads leaning together. He felt like he had walked into a new room. Like it wasn’t even the same room he had been in half an hour ago, was how different everything looked to him. 

“What did Dick say?” Hal asked after a bit.

“He’s working through it. I told him I didn’t need an answer right away.”

“Hey Bruce.”

“Hm.”

“We’re not there yet.”

Bruce turned his head so they were watching each other again. “You’ll tell me when we are?”

“Yeah,” Hal said, and was surprised to discover it was the truth. “I will.” He reached a hand for Bruce’s, and Bruce knit their fingers together. It was his right joined to Bruce’s left, and he could feel Bruce’s ring against his hand. The wedding ring nestling against his Lantern ring, one life lying alongside the other. Talk about your metaphor.

“Dick must have shit a brick,” Hal said. 

“He’ll get over it.”

“What the fuck would you do with yourself, if you weren’t Batman?”

“I don’t know. Dick asked the same. Not sure of the answer. I’m pretty interested in windsurfing, to tell you the truth.”

Hal laughed, and Bruce gave a small smile. “Also,” he said, “I have a smoking hot husband, and I’m pretty interested in fucking him. So I think the days would fill up, what with one thing and another.”

“Tell me that’s not what you said to Dick.”

“No, but I should have.”

“What would happen to Damian?”

“He was Dick’s Robin before, and he could be so again. Probably better for him, the truth is. And Tim is not that far away from being able to helm Wayne Enterprises on his own.”

“Jason?”

“I guess if we needed anyone murdered, he could take care of that.”

Hal laughed again, tipping his head back and against the wall, and he heard Bruce’s low laugh too. It felt so good. “You’re not so bad at this fathering thing,” he said. “For real. You’re good with all of them.”

“Maybe,” Bruce said. “But that’s long practice. You on the other hand are a natural at it, and I am anything but. I resent that, at times.”

Hal thought about that one. It wasn’t untrue. He had caught glimmers of Bruce’s resentment, before. It wasn’t really fixable. Not unlike him. It was just the way things were. 

“I don’t know how to say sorry for sucking so bad at this,” Hal said, tightening his grip on Bruce’s hand. "At the us thing."

“Then let’s skip that part.”

“Ollie would say we can’t skip that part.”

Bruce frowned. “What?”

“Before, I asked him for some advice. About marriage stuff.”

“Well that explains quite a bit.”

“Nah, you’d agree with him. He told me to get my head out of my ass.”

Bruce whuffed a laugh. Hal shifted, re-settled himself on Bruce’s chest, and Bruce slung his arm around him. Hal thought about what Bruce had said before, about the together part. Doing this together. What would that even look like? He was ashamed to realize he had no idea. He had talked such a good game, to Parallax, to Damian, to Bruce, to himself. Pretending he was fine with his illness, that he could handle the MD, that it was just this part of him that wasn’t good or bad, that even being in a wheelchair would be fine. Bravado, all of it. Maybe Bruce hadn’t been wrong to tell him he couldn’t trust him, because what trust had Hal ever extended to him? He had done nothing but shut him out. Fuck, he had almost wrecked them. He had come so close to wrecking them.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Hal murmured, and Bruce pulled him closer, buried his face in Hal’s hair. 

“I am too,” he murmured. 

“Hey Bruce.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m not just lying here because I am having many emotions. I’m not actually sure I can get up.”

“Okay, hang on,” Bruce said, and he slid out from under him. Hal winced. 

“Where?” Bruce said.

“My fucking back.”

“All right, I’ve got you.” Hal had no more strength to resist. There was nothing in him that could have even tried. Bruce crouched beside him, scooped him up in one smooth motion into those unimaginably powerful arms. It was a shocking moment, the awareness that Bruce could do that. He had been telling himself that he hadn’t lost that much muscle mass over the last year, not really. But that was a lie, and he knew it. He told himself it wasn’t that bad because at least Bruce staggered a little bit, but a year ago, would it even have been possible? Definitely not. 

Bruce laid him gently in the bed, but he didn’t let go of him – he kept cradling him, and Hal kept holding onto him. There was so much to say, but really there was nothing to say, not really. “Did you get the meds in you?” Bruce whispered, and Hal nodded. 

“Shit,” he breathed, because he just noticed where the wheelchair had landed – on his bedside table, and the lamp and everything was broken, and the table was destroyed. He would have to tell Alfred. There was no getting around this one. And in the agony of his rage, he had put his hands on Bruce. He had dared. Jesus Christ.

“I. . . I hit you,” he said. “Holy fuck. I don’t. . . baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. That—that is so not fucking okay.”

“I know,” Bruce said, hands playing with his hair.

“I am so not fucking okay.”

“I know that too.”

“I think. . . I think I should probably talk to someone. A professional kind of someone. Maybe Dinah.”

“I think that is a very good idea.”

“Yeah. Well, I can’t keep breaking furniture, Alfred’s gonna kick me out.”

“Alfred would kick me out first, believe me.”

“Maybe I need some kind of drugs.”

“Possibly. There are other things that can help, too.”

“What, like some of Jason’s stress-relieving methods?”

“I had in mind meditation. If you were interested. You might have noticed, I have something of a temper. Sometimes it gets the better of me, and I lose. But twenty years ago, before I had learned meditation, I lost all the time. Meditation can have a remarkable effect on the body’s processing of anger.”

“Wait, like. . . you would be my sensei?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, if you—”

“Oh I did,” Hal said with a grin. “I would be such a good student, you don’t even know how good I’d be for teacher.”

Bruce sighed. “Your fantasy life is disturbing.”

“I’ve been bad, sensei.”

“This conversation is over.”

“Oh get over yourself,” Hal said, tugging at his hand. “And yeah, of course, that would be awesome. But starting with Dinah, I think.”

“I agree.”

“Also,” Hal said thoughtfully, “the truth is I really wanna find out from her what she ever did to make Ollie so mad, because I’m having a hard time picturing it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before, when Ollie was giving me advice. No, shut up, don’t make that face, it was good advice. And I asked him if he’d ever been mad at Dinah, like really, relationship-ending kind of mad, and he said yeah. I asked him what it was but he wouldn’t tell me. Maybe she’ll spill. What do you think it was?”

Bruce was silent, and Hal propped on his elbow. “I’ve been trying to come up with it. The only thing I can figure out is, she must have fucked around.” He glanced down at Bruce, who was still silent. “No fucking way. You know who it was, don’t you.”

“Yes,” Bruce said.

“Well?”

Bruce said nothing. Hal stared at him. “Jesus Christ,” Hal said. “You’re kidding me.”

“Hal, it was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, I get that, it’s not like I’m bothered, I’m just. . . adjusting. Jesus. Any other friends of mine you might have accidentally boned? If you open your mouth and say Barry, I am going to leap directly out this window.”

“I promise you I have not slept with Barry.”

“What about—no, never mind, I am truly not asking any more questions. No wait, just a couple more. What about other people in the League? Ever slept with anyone else?”

“This is not a fun game.”

“Mmm, it kinda is for me. Who else in the League?”

Bruce winced. “I don’t see how it’s important that—” 

“Diana?”

Bruce was silent. “Unbelievable,” Hal said. “Have you never heard of not shitting where you eat? For fuck’s sake, should we do this as who you _haven’t_ slept with? Wait wait – Clark?”

“No!”

Hal laughed. “Oh, but _that_ you’re righteously offended at. Seriously, why not Clark?”

“My best friend?” 

“Uh, yeah, your best friend who is possibly the most gorgeous individual on the face of the planet, why wouldn’t you tap that?”

Bruce grimaced. “Not my type. And for the record that's the last time you two hang out together without a chaperone.”

“So, no one else in the League?”

“Not. . . technically, no.”

“Oh ho ho, I’m going to need to know more about this ‘technically’ thing. So maybe people associated with the League, but not technically in it? Who else, come on.”

Bruce sighed deeply. “John Constantine,” he said. 

“ _That_ asshole?”

“He’s not. If you bothered to have five minutes’ conversation with the man—”

“Nope, still hate him. Who else?”

“Hal, can we please just—”

“Who else?” he said, prodding at him. Bruce sighed again. 

“Jason Blood.”

“ _What_?? Are you fucking _kidding me_? The man turns into a literal hell demon, do you have some kind of death wish? Do you not get enough excitement in your regular job, that you need to—ohhhhh,” Hal said with a grin. “No no no, I get it now. I see what it is. You like the mouthy ones. That’s why Clark is a no-go zone for you, because he’s a nice guy, and it takes a little bit of attitude to get you cranked, doesn’t it?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Bruce said, rolling over the other direction, but Hal just pulled him back. 

“No you don’t, come back here, I’m not criticizing. It’s not a criticism to point out that you have a type – male and female, as it turns out, especially when you throw in Selina, though that’s not so much attitude as terminal cuntitude. You have, objectively speaking, terrible taste babe. I’m beginning to see Dick’s point.”

“Dick?”

“Yeah, back when he was giving me the shovel talk. He said you were monumentally prone to terrible decisions when it came to romance.”

“Well that little shit.”

“Yeah, if I’m remembering right that was the same conversation where he called your bed a revolving door, which evidently was also accurate, you slut.”

“I feel sure you have made some questionable romantic decisions at some point in your life. Some of them right in this very house, even.”

“Holy fuck, you’re going to bring up Scarlett Johansson again, aren’t you? You are, that’s exactly what you’re doing. I cannot believe you are still salty about that.”

“It was in my _house_ , I think I get to be a little salty.”

“We weren’t even together, you didn’t even give a shit!”

“I gave quite a few shits.”

Hal reared back. “Wait, really?”

“Really.”

Hal stroked his arm. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t know. You shoulda just jumped me.”

“That would have turned out well.”

“Yeah.” Hal grinned. “But then I might have been deprived of your very smooth Sex Massage of Death later on. Holy shit I still get hot thinking about that.”

“Do you now,” Bruce murmured, pulling him down on top of him. Bruce’s hands were wandering over his back, his ass. 

“Yeah,” Hal said, his throat tightening. Holy fuck, he wanted him so bad. He bent his head to kiss him, and Bruce’s mouth was super-heated, his tongue fucking obliterated him. Bruce rolled them so he was on top. 

“Turn over,” Bruce murmured in his ear. 

“No, kiss me,” Hal murmured back, and they were eating each other’s mouths, holy fuck, how had he gone two months without this? Without Bruce’s mouth on his, Bruce’s body pressed up against his? He was practically clawing at Bruce’s back. They weren’t making out so much as mauling each other, they were so hungry. 

“Fucking love you so much,” Hal groaned, when he had to come up for air, and Bruce was actually _biting_ at his neck, and full-on grinding on him, because no one had ever accused them of taking it slow. 

“Turn over,” Bruce said again. “Worth it, I swear.”

Hal rolled over so he was on his stomach, and Bruce straddled him. “What are you—”

Then Bruce’s hands started on his back, kneading him. Those powerful hands were working on the knots up and down his spine, and Hal’s groan this time was even deeper. And Bruce was letting his weight rest on Hal’s ass, and it was just like before, like that night. When Hal had been shaking with want. Back before he had even known what want really was. 

“Fuck,” Hal moaned. Bruce bent to his ear.

“Good?”

“So good. Fuck give me more.”

Bruce’s weight was pressing into his ass more now, and Hal’s boner was painful, but so good. He wanted to grind on the mattress. But then Bruce shifted a bit, and Bruce’s cock was pressing into his ass, dragging along his crack with every sweep of his hands, and Hal groaned again. 

“You could make me cum like this,” he managed.

“Let’s see about that,” Bruce whispered back. 

“Lantern!” The door of the bedroom had banged back, and Damian was launching himself across the room, launching himself directly onto the bed. 

“Damian, no!” Bruce said, his arm out to break his son’s assault and protect Hal’s spine. “Damian, you can’t do that, you have to be more careful than that.”

“Well I don’t see why not, _you_ were on top of him.”

Hal started laughing, but pulling the sheets up a bit more. Bruce was arranging a discreet pillow over his groin, and Hal laughed at that even harder. “Alfred said you were back,” Damian was saying, sprawling across the bed. “He said to let you sleep, but it’s nearly ten o’clock, I decided that was long enough for you to sleep.”

“Oh, you decided, huh.” 

“Of course,” Damian said, and when had his voice started doing that thing? When he had thrown back the door of their room, Hal had about jumped out of his skin, because it had sounded like a strange man’s voice. His voice was crackling at the edges, careening between squeaks and growls, and how was this even possible? And had tiny Damian shot up a full three feet in the two months he had been gone, or had he been this tall before? It was like he was taking up the whole bed.

“So, just to update you,” Damian said. “We’re going to have to engage a new history tutor, this one is absolute trash. Last week he blatantly confused his Sassanians with his Achaemenids, and he wasn’t even sufficiently sorry about it.”

“Yeah, I hate when that happens.”

“So I’ve decided to write a fifteen-page paper on the military victories of Shapur I, that ought to show him. How can someone so ignorant actually exist? But really, the top priority needs to be sacking him immediately. So how was space? Have you considered what we talked about before?”

“Uhhh. . . refresh my memory?”

“You know, what we talked about. About you taking me with you, so I could assist you.”

“What?” Bruce said, turning around from where he was pulling on his pants. “What was that?”

“Okay now, no, hang on, _at no point_ did I say that was happening, that was all _you_ saying that, back up the bus you just threw me under there, kid.”

“That is not at _all_ what happened,” Damian protested. “I distinctly remember our entire conversation, and just because _your_ memory is failing with age—”

“Oh now I’m old, too?”

“You look far older than when you left. Decrepit, really. Look at you, gray hair, sagging skin, you’ve practically got a wattle—”

“Okay, that’s it, you’re paying for that,” Hal said, lunging at him and rolling him and wrestling him down, while Damian kicked and laughed and flailed. Still enough of a kid for this, he was glad to see, and he let Damian grapple with him and even win a roll or two, and yeah, every muscle in his tired body ached, and for sure he would be paying for this all the rest of today and into tomorrow, but goddamn. Goddamn. His son – his _son_ – was laughing and grinning and looking at him like he had hung the moon, and Hal grinned back, and felt like his heart might burst.

“No one is going into space,” Bruce said.

“Well I am, a little,” Hal said.

“You yes, him no,” Bruce said, pointing at Damian. “I’m going to take a shower. Get off the bed, the two of you are a disgrace, look at this mess.”

Hal and Damian laughed as Bruce closed the bathroom door, and Hal reached up to tousle that shock of hair that was so like his dad’s. He saw Damian glance at the wreckage of the bedside table, and the wheelchair. Saw the slide of his eyes as he reconstructed the room like the little detective he was. “You all right?” Damian said quietly, and the dark eyes were grave. 

Hal took a breath. “Not yet,” he said. “I’m. . . having kind of a hard time right now.”

“I know,” the kid said, and Hal had to look quickly away, because his emotions were a little close to the surface right now. He didn’t want to think how much Damian might have heard this morning. The walls in this house were thick, but not impenetrable. 

“But you’re home now,” Damian said, as if that settled things, and then – ah God, what had he ever done to deserve this – then that heavy little head banged onto his chest and rested there, and Hal shut his eyes at the sweetness of it. His son, his son, this last and greatest gift of the universe that he had never done anything to deserve. Damian just rested there, letting Hal hold him.

The bathroom door clicked open, and Bruce reached for the shirt he had tossed on the chair last night. He stood there looking at them. His eyes met Hal’s over top of Damian, and Hal poured everything he was feeling into that gaze – all his love, all his fear, all his everything. Just all of it, with nothing held back. And Bruce gave it right back. They rested there, in each other’s eyes, for long minutes. _Love you love you love you_ was all Hal’s eyes said, and Bruce said it back to him, and things would probably get worse before they got better, but this part would never not be true. 

“All right, stop, I know what you’re doing, it’s gross,” Damian said, and Hal laughed.

“What’s gross is the wreck you two have made of the bed,” Bruce groused, and Hal cocked an eyebrow at Damian, who smirked back at him, and by common consent they lunged as one for Bruce’s legs, pulling him off balance and toppling him over onto them.

“Oof, we did not think this through, goddamn what do you weigh,” Hal laughed.

“All right, I’ve had it, that’s enough out of you two,” Bruce said, and he was wrestling both of them now, one thick bicep wrapped around Hal, one around Damian, and Damian was kicking and flailing like he was far younger than his thirteen years, laughing and shouting _Pennyworth Pennyworth this is an outrage, come put a stop to this at once!_ which only succeeded in summoning Titus, who careered down the hall barking madly and then decided to join the fun by leaping onto the bed and landing with a massive _whoomf_ on Bruce’s back. 

“Oh God, just drive me straight to the hospital,” Hal groaned underneath the layers of roiling bodies, and grinned as Bruce’s lips brushed the side of his face, unnoticed in the melee.


	5. Chapter 5

Like with most things, what he had thought would be a terrifying and irreversible milestone was neither, really. He used a wheelchair when he needed to, and jettisoned it when he did not. And what no one had told him was, it was liberating.

Not the actual sitting in it – there was nothing liberating about that. But on days when he used the chair, his body was no longer working overtime to keep him upright, and at the end of the first day of using it he realized that for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he wasn’t tired.

“I’m not tired,” he said to Bruce, lying in bed that night. “Holy fuck.” 

“I am,” Bruce murmured into his pillow.

“I could. . . I mean, it’s been a long day, and yeah, I’m tired from that, but like tired in a normal way, you know? Not in the ‘my bones have been ground into powder’ kind of way. In the _normal_ way.”

“That’s great.”

“I should let you sleep.” Hal lay there staring into the dark. After a few minutes he looked at Bruce. “Are you actually asleep?”

Bruce didn’t respond. His breathing was slow and even. “Are you not answering because you are asleep, or because you’re hoping to be asleep and you think maybe if you don’t answer I’ll shut up?”

“Which do you think?”

“Okay, no need to be rude,” he said, settling back. He grinned at the ceiling. 

So yeah, the chair could be liberating. It gave him more of himself back, when he used it. And he didn’t have to use it all the time. If he used it about once a week or so, or even every couple of days, then he found it was enough of a rest for his spine that he could make it the rest of the week. Sometimes just a few hours helped. For some reason he had thought that a wheelchair was like a thing you legally had to use all the time, like it was the law or something. Like the Disability Police would come to your house and arrest you, who knew what the fuck he had thought. 

It could be liberating, but it wasn’t always. There were times when it just sucked. Sitting in it for the first time had not been liberating. It had been a Saturday morning, and it was a bad day. One of the worst, in fact. His back had just refused to function, and the pain in his muscles was literally nauseating him, and all he wanted to do was just lie in bed. But it was Saturday, and it was breakfast, and he hated missing Saturday breakfast. The thought of lying here while everyone was downstairs was miserable – even more miserable to think that everyone would know why he wasn’t there. He hadn’t seen Dick since he had gotten back from Oa, and he had really wanted to see him. And he knew – realistically, he knew – there was only one way of getting there. He managed to haul himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and thought about it. 

Bruce wrapped arms around him, and Hal leaned back against him. “I can have Alfred send up a tray,” Bruce murmured. “You and I could just eat up here.” Hal shook his head. 

“I can do it,” he said. He glanced down at the Lantern ring. But willpower would not get him through this. That had been his problem all along, was relying on that ring, and thinking it was the source of his strength. It was the other ring he needed for this. The stronger ring, the one on his left. 

“Will you. . . help me. With—with that,” he said, nodding at the chair. The chair had been folded, propped up against a wall of their room since he had gotten home last month. Hal hadn’t looked at it or touched it. It had coiled there like a snake in the corner of his room, and he had averted his eyes. But today it was his only ticket to Saturday breakfast. 

Bruce brought it closer to him, and Hal eased into it, and gave a slight gasp at it, because the lining of the chair was. . . it was amazing. “What the hell is this,” Hal said. It was like it was embracing him, but he was sinking into it at the same time. It was like falling into the inside of a cloud.

“It’s a customized padding, not too different in its structure from memory foam but with some crucial variations. I’ve made some adjustments based on my research. I designed it to offer your spine support while taking pressure off your hips as well.”

“You made this.”

“I did.”

“Wait. The whole thing, or just the padding?”

“The whole thing, in fact. I took the best of various designs, tried out a few prototypes. Commercial wheelchairs use an alloy much heavier than this one, but the lightness of this one increases maneuverability and should remove as much strain as possible from your arm muscles, when you’re propelling it yourself. It has electrical components as well, but I chose to engineer those as detachable, so as to decrease the weight.”

“So what you’re telling me is, this is like the Batmobile of wheelchairs?”

“Well it’s lacking an internal combustion engine, but like I said, it’s a prototype, we can always upgrade.”

“I kind of want to have sex with the padding of this thing.”

“If you like it, I was thinking I might engineer a mattress out of it. So you couldn’t have sex literally with it, but on it is certainly possible.”

“I don’t think so,” Hal said. “I think I’d get too distracted. I’d be in the middle of fucking you and I’d have to stop to caress the mattress.”

Bruce was crouched by the chair, and he gave a small smile. Hal was just talking to cover the thudding of his heart, really, but Bruce probably knew that. “I’m ready,” Hal said.

“Okay,” Bruce said. He did that thing he did, the thing Hal secretly loved, where he put a hand on the back of Hal’s neck and just let it rest there. And then he rose.

“Hey one thing,” Hal said. “Can you—please don’t push me. I can do it.”

So that was how he went to breakfast in a wheelchair for the first time. His face burned and crackled with shame, when he came into the breakfast room. Meeting people’s eyes was a bit hard for the first few minutes, and then he forced himself to act as though everything was fine. He didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. But somehow people were still able to eat their breakfast and shout and laugh as though everything was normal, and it hit him that maybe to them it was normal, that maybe to them it was truly not a big deal. He didn’t actually eat much, at that breakfast – his jaw was a little too tight for that. 

He sat there listening with half an ear to the usual roil of conversation, not really able to process much of it except that a lot of it seemed to concern this family of rabbits that one of Damian’s cats had unearthed, and what to do with it. “I do have an excellent recipe,” Alfred suggested, to Damian’s horrified howls of protest. Tim laughed loudly at that, and Damian threw an entire syrup-coated waffle at him. Tim muttered “that’s it, goddammit” and launched himself across the table, and Dick intervened and hauled him back, and then Tim stormed out and Dick went to follow him and there were angry voices in the hallway and Barbara took the opportunity to finish all Dick’s waffles, and Tim’s as well.

Hal sat there poking at his uneaten waffle and not paying attention to much of it. Dick and Tim came back, and Stephanie started arguing with Damian about something, he didn’t know what. It was all happening around him, but his eyes were tunnel-visioned down. He should say something, pretend like he was fine and everything was normal. But he couldn’t think what that would be, so after a bit, when there was enough commotion that no one would really notice, he wheeled himself carefully out and down the hall to the little bathroom off the kitchen and closed the door and leaned over the toilet and threw up everything he had just eaten. It wasn’t the meds, it was the shame. 

_Why shame,_ Dinah would say, when he met with her this week. _Tell me about the shame._ And he wouldn’t know what to say, because it would mean explaining about growing up in a military family, and how you did not show weakness, to anyone, ever, and he didn’t know if anyone non-military could really understand that, what that meant.

More than weakness: you didn’t draw any negative attention to yourself. You didn’t do anything to make someone look at you. And then inevitably Dinah would say, _and why’s that,_ and he wouldn’t know what to say to that, because the only answer was _so you don’t get the shit beaten out of you._ And Martin Jordan was not a box he was going to unlock, not for Dinah. Not for anyone but Bruce, but he had never even told Bruce, Bruce had just figured it out. 

When he was done with the retching, he maneuvered himself to the sink and rested there, propped against the cool sleek porcelain. The door of the tiny bathroom opened and shut, and Hal brought his head up with a jerk. “Bruce I’m okay, just—”

But it wasn’t Bruce. “Dick,” he said. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

“No,” Dick said, seating himself comfortably on the toilet. Hal blinked at him.

“No?”

“No.” 

Dick had a plate of waffles with him, and he balanced it on his legs and started sawing at the waffles with his knife and fork. He put a syrup-soaked brick in his mouth and chewed placidly. “Barbara stole my breakfast while I was ripping Tim a new one,” he said around a mouthful of waffle, by way of explanation.

“So you. . . decided to come eat it in the bathroom?”

“Yep.” 

“Any reason?”

“You’re in here.”

“Ah. . . yes. Behind a closed door, which is the universal symbol for ‘please leave me alone.’”

“You didn’t lock it,” Dick pointed out.

“I was in a bit of a hurry.”

“Well, a locked door is the universal symbol of leave me alone. A closed door is really just more of a suggestion.”

“Maybe in this house.”

“Hah, you’re not wrong about that one,” Dick said, and he speared another forkful of waffles. “Alfred made a raspberry compote with these, did you try it? It is fucking amazing.”

Hal stared into the sink. “Dick,” he said quietly. “Please leave me alone.”

“Okay,” Dick said. He cut himself another bite of waffle, smeared with the raspberry sauce, and chewed it.

“You’re still here,” Hal said.

“But I’m leaving you alone.”

“More alone than that, please.”

“Why, are you gonna throw up again?”

“Is that what it would take to get you to leave?”

Dick shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve got a pretty cast-iron stomach, so it’s not like it would bother me, I’d probably just keep eating my waffles. I ever tell you what Roy said, after Lian was born? He told me that at first the diaper thing really bothered him, but after a few months of it, he said he could change a poopy diaper while eating a peanut butter sandwich, was how broken he was. I’ve always remembered that.”

Hal just stared at him. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I wanted to have breakfast with you, and you’re in here.”

“You just. . . don’t listen to anything you don’t want to hear, do you?”

“Not much.” He chased down a last lake of syrup with a soggy waffle sponge.

“You really were raised by him, weren’t you.”

“This is what people are always forgetting.” He set his finished plate on the back of the toilet, where it perched precariously, and he used some toilet paper to wipe his hands. There was a banging on the door and a peremptory voice.

“Grayson, are you in there?”

“Yeah, come on in,” Dick said.

“No, he cannot come on in, what the—” But Damian had edged in the door too.

“Look,” he said with a scowl. “I don’t know what you said to Drake, but whatever it was, it was clearly insufficient, because he hasn’t apologized to me _once_ , and that sort of behavior is intolerable. He blatantly attacked me! And Father just _ignored_ his offenses, like he always does, to focus on _mine_ instead, when my response was entirely proportional to—”

“Bullshit, baby bird. You threw a fucking _waffle_ at him because he laughed, get over yourself. Oh, and Alfred said he’s saving you all the dishes to do, so you better get out there and get busy. He also said that if you do a good enough job, he’ll let you off the hook for the lunch and dinner dishes, but that if he sees the smallest spot on the glassware, you’re condemned to, I think the phrase was, ‘twenty-four wretched hours of humiliating servitude.’”

“ _What?!_ That’s completely unfair! And what’s Drake’s punishment, he’s the one who hurled himself across the table like a demented baboon!”

“Tim has to spend the rest of the day in the Cave with Bruce, helping him reconfigure the mainframe’s software. Trust me, you’ve got the better deal.”

“Hey,” came Stephanie’s voice, as she stuck her head in the door. “Oh good, you’re all here.”

“For fuck’s sake,” sighed Hal, but she was oblivious, and he was beginning to think ‘obliviousness to social cues’ was the defining feature of being a Bat. 

“Move over,” she said to Damian, and then because the little powder room had reached capacity, she simply hoisted herself up in one smooth motion and used the back of his wheelchair – his fucking wheelchair, thank you – to climb to the other side of the toilet. Hal caught Damian’s glance at her, and the way he hastily averted his eyes as her lean blond form clambered over him. The quick lick of his lips and his swallow as she pressed up against him. Maybe Damian’s constant low-level rage at Tim had a source other than jealousy over Bruce’s attention. 

“So anyway,” she was saying, “Tim and I were supposed to train down in the Cave today, but it looks like he’s going to be chained to a CPU for the next thirty-six hours—”

“Which he deserves,” Damian said sullenly.

“Stuff it, Lil’ Wayne, I am not getting in between the two of you. So Dick, I was wondering if—”

“ _What_ did you just call me?”

“—if you wanted to do some training with me? I’m dying to do some more hand-to-hand work, and if you’ve got the time I’d love to go nine rounds with the original and _actual_ Robin, if—”

“You will eat those words, Brown, I’m warning you!”

“Oh yeah, you gonna make me?” And then they were play-sparring over top of Hal and Dick and the toilet and what was left of Dick’s waffles.

“Cut it out, you four-year-olds,” Dick said. “Yeah Steph, I’m happy to, just let my breakfast hit bottom and let me get some more coffee in me – it was a rough night, so I’m probably gonna be a bit slow this morning. It’s gonna piss Tim off, if we’re training and having a good time while he’s in jail.”

“Pissing Tim off is not a deal-breaker for me.”

“Aw have some compassion for the guy, he’s got to deal with Bruce’s lectures on anger management all day long today. Hey let’s play Anger Bruce Bingo,” he said, and Stephanie started laughing. 

“You must learn to master your rage before it masters you,” she growled, in a passable imitation of Bruce’s baritone, and Dick laughed. 

“Automatic ten points for every time he mentions meditation,” he said. “Or talks about how he used to lose his temper _all_ the time before he started to meditate.”

“Right?? Like Jesus Christ, what were you like before, did you rip apart gerbils with your teeth?”

“Hey,” Hal interjected. “You should—you know, be more respectful.”

Three heads swiveled to him, and then three voices started laughing at once. “Master your rage,” Stephanie said in Bruce-voice, swinging her leg at him. 

“Hey!” he yelled, catching her leg, but then Damian was punching at him, and Dick too, and he was blocking them, swatting at them and trying to prevent Dick’s plate of waffles from landing in his lap with a syrupy splat.

“Hey! Hey hey hey hey _HEY!_ ” Hal shouted, and the door opened again.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Bruce said, glancing at the four of them wedged into the tiny room. “If you’re quite done with your day spa.”

“Are you kidding me? What the—” 

Stephanie clambered back over him, landing with a leap in the hallway, and Damian took off after her like a shot. “Hey Damian,” Dick called down the hallway. “Hang on, you and me are not done talking,” he shouted, and he slipped out the door under Bruce’s arm, taking off after Damian and Stephanie.

Bruce was holding the door open for him, a small frown on his face. “There are better places to hold a family meeting,” he said. “It’s an enormous house, why on earth did you invite everyone into the bathroom?”

“Are you _serious_ ,” Hal said, but then Dick’s head popped back up around the doorframe.

“Hey Hal, if Steph wants to do some serious training, I was thinking you might be able to help us out a little. If you could throw up some constructs, that would be great. I don’t want to tire you out or anything, but how about a couple of simple barriers, maybe even some moving obstacles?”

“Freight engines and flaming hula hoops it is,” Hal said. 

“I had in mind some seven-foot zombie poodles,” Dick said.

“I like the way you think. Be down in a second.”

“Cool. Oh shit, Alfred will kill me if I leave food around,” he said, reaching around behind Hal to scoop up his waffle plate from the toilet. His foot caught the edge of Hal’s chair, and he knocked Hal’s knee hard, and how a creature who could vault off literal buildings could also manage to be so occasionally ungainly, Hal had no idea.

“Shit!” Dick said. “Fuck I'm sorry. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Hal said. 

“You sure?”

Hal met his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure.”

Dick gave a small slow smile, and he squeezed Hal’s knee. “All right, zombie poodles it is, I’m holding you to it,” he said, slipping back under Bruce’s arm and heading off to the kitchens, whistling an aimless tune.


	6. Chapter 6

“Well what do you know, if it isn’t Hal the Acquaintance,” the beautiful woman said, coming over to join him. She propped against the wall of the terrace next to him. “How are things, Hal Who Lives In The House?”

Hal grinned. “Scarlett Johansson,” he said. 

“Aw look at you, you figured it out.”

“I did. Eventually. How are you? You look amazing, but I’m betting you know that.”

“In fact I do. I was hoping I might see you at this thing. Bruce has really outdone himself this year.”

“That he has,” Hal agreed. She was right, the gala really was stunning this year. Every inch of the Manor was hung with lights, music spilled from every open window, and champagne flowed in literal fountains, everywhere you turned. He secretly loved it, seeing the Manor like this – even knowing the days of warfare between Alfred and the army of caterers that lay behind it all, it was worth it. 

“Almost like Bruce really has something to celebrate this year,” she said. 

“Yeah, maybe it’s been a good year for Wayne Industries.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” she said. She gave him a once-over. “You can still wear the hell out of a tux. Do you have any idea what you look like in that?”

“In fact I do. What are you doing hanging out with the riffraff here? You’re supposed to be up there where everyone can admire you.” He nodded up at the upper terraces, where the party was in full swing. He was leaning against the low rock wall around the pool, which gave him a good vantage on the party, but didn’t get as much traffic as other places. It was his favorite perch for parties like this. 

“Periodic absence increases market value, it’s basic economics. Besides, you’re still the prettiest one at the party. Even if you don’t return my calls. A girl could get her feelings hurt.”

“Okay, that. . . is not strictly speaking my fault.”

“Oh I figured. He didn’t give you my messages, did he?”

“Wait, messages plural?”

She laughed. “What a cockblock, I should have known. Well I know how you can make it up to me,” she said, leaning her shoulder against his. “Any more storage closets you feel like giving me a tour of?” 

“Ah. Right. See, about that—”

“You’re about to tell me that ring on your finger is real, aren’t you.”

“Pretty real, yeah.”

“Missed my chance again, isn’t that just my luck.” 

“Oh, something tells me you’ll be all right.”

She laughed again. “See, now you’re just stereotyping me. You don’t know anything about the intense suffering of my life, the howling wasteland of misery that is my daily existence.”

“Yeah, being the world’s most highly paid actress must suck wet ass, my condolences.”

“Someone’s been keeping up with his Us Weekly subscription. Hey you know what else being the world’s most highly paid actress gives you, is a real eye for the finer things in life. Good jewelry especially. Like high carat gold, for instance,” she said, nodding at the rich luster of gold on his left hand. “That’s twenty-two carat, at least.”

“Twenty-four.”

“It’s delicious. Hey speaking of wedding rings, apparently Bruce is wearing one these days too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Rumor is it’s a decoy, but I’m not so sure about that. Only, if it’s real, no one can figure out who’s got the other one. It’s no one in any of my circles, and he and I have got some serious social overlap going on. The thought is, maybe someone from European nobility, but where are they? You never see him with anyone, so then we’re back to the decoy theory. People have been going a little nuts, trying to figure it out. Social puzzle of the year, you might say.”

“Not much to talk about in your world, is there?”

“You’re not wrong there. Gives people something to do other than fixate on the sinkholes of their own emotional lives I guess. It’s pretty funny – everyone is checking out everyone else’s hand, trying to find the matching ring. It’s the party’s most popular parlor game. So I’m just hanging out here by the pool with you, a glass of excellent champagne, and the one hand no one is bothering to look at. Because why check out a complete nobody, right?”

Hal gave a short laugh. It wasn’t like they were hiding their marriage or anything, but it certainly wasn’t public knowledge. She wasn’t wrong, that he was invisible in Bruce’s world – or what most people imagined to be Bruce’s world. He drank more champagne and enjoyed the light breeze that had kicked up. The lights were on in the carriage house, which meant Damian had ducked out of the party – his presence had been demanded under duress, and there had been shouts and protests and sullen glares for days about that. The kid had probably gone to seek refuge in his studio at the first opportunity. He should probably go check on him, maybe hide in there with him for a bit.

“Hey, speaking of rings,” Scarlett said. Her voice was lower, and the flirtatiousness of a minute ago was gone. She grasped his right hand. 

“Turn this to the inside, at an event like this,” she said, and her fingers were twisting his Lantern ring, turning its distinctive face to his palm. “Okay? It doesn’t draw focus that way.”

“Oh that—I just—I’m a big fan, is all, a really big fan, and the ring is just—”

“I’m a big fan too, believe me. But you don’t know this world, and I do, and people notice things. If that’s visible, at a party like this, people will start to draw connections. They’ll start to draw them to Bruce, too, and they already know how thick he is with the Justice League. They’ll start to ask questions like, is Bruce Wayne sleeping with the Green Lantern? And then they might start to ask another question, like, who exactly is Bruce Wayne, anyway?”

He met her eyes at that, and her look was level, her voice still quiet. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again. “I play act for a living,” she said. “Makes it easy to spot when other people are doing it too. Be a little more fucking careful, all right?”

“Scarlett, I don’t—that’s not—”

“Oh relax, you’re gonna give yourself a stroke. I got your back, okay? Both your backs, for what it’s worth.” She was still holding his hand, and she gave it a squeeze. 

“Well this looks cozy.” It was Bruce’s voice, as he came down the stone steps to the poolside terrace, and Hal dropped Scarlett’s hand like it was on fire, but Bruce gave a little laugh at it. 

“Scarlett, you’re a vision as always. How can it possibly be legal for you to wear a dress like that in public?” He kissed her cheek, and then her hand, and handed her a fresh flute of champagne. 

“Smooth talker. You’ve spent all evening talking to politicians and haven’t even danced with me once.”

“Well let’s take care of that, shall we?”

“I’ll hold you to it,” she said. “But first, I will be a good girl and go make the rounds one more time. I think when I was mingling before I spent too much time facing people, and they might not have been fully able to appreciate my ass in this dress. Better go fix that.”

She drifted off up the stairs, and Hal cocked his head, watching her go, because she was right, it was a great dress, but the front was for sure not its best side. “Really,” Bruce said, watching him. 

“Shut up, you were looking too. So is this shindig winding down, or do you think you still need to hang around for a bit?”

“Oh, I think I’m close to escape time. Dick’s promised to spend some time with a couple of senators for me. As long as Alfred doesn’t spot me, I can probably duck out.”

“Good, because there’s something I want to show you.”

Bruce cocked a curious brow, but he followed as Hal led them up the stairs. Hal took his time, and he leaned on the railing as he went. He well remembered what this party had done to him last year, and how wiped he had been the next day. But he led Bruce slowly around the edges of the crowd, away from anyone who looked like they might be reaching out to entangle him, and he kept angling them for the side doors.

“This way,” he said, beckoning around the back of the house. They were cutting through the bushes. 

“Jordan, I’m not going to go have sex in the hedges. Can’t we please go back around to—”

“You’ll like it, I swear. Come on, follow me.”

And he pushed through the little door off the laundry room, and into the darkened hallway beyond. He slipped his hand in Bruce’s, pulling him along.

“Jordan—”

“Come on, just trust me.”

He paused at the door of the little storage pantry, the one he had led Scarlett to last year. Bruce’s face was tight. “What the hell are you—”

Hal pushed back the door, pulled Bruce inside, shut the door behind them. He watched Bruce’s face.

The little room had been transformed. The tidied shelves were lined with blazing candles over every inch of them. The brooms and dustpans and mops had all been moved out, and in the middle of the room was a soft thick rug, and a little table with a comfortable chair. There were more candles on the table, and a bottle of wine, and two wineglasses. 

“I thought maybe you and I could have our own little party,” Hal said hesitantly, because Bruce’s face was impassive. “If you wanted. With the person I really want to be partying with. The person I wanted to be partying with last year too.”

Bruce put his hands in his pockets. “You did this,” he said. 

“Well I had some help. But. . . yeah. Oh, and I thought you would maybe have had enough of champagne, so I did some research, and I thought this might be a good way to finish off the evening,” he said, holding up the bottle of wine.

“That’s a Massandra Madeira,” Bruce said. “I like Massandra.”

“I know you do.”

“That’s a 1939. That’s a three thousand dollar bottle of wine.”

“Yes. Yes it is, and I know what you’re thinking, but here is the thing: I’m rich.”

“Oh are you now,” Bruce said.

“Not just ordinary rich, either. I mean filthy. Like, really disgusting. So don’t even sweat that bottle of wine is what I’m saying, babe.”

Bruce was still standing there, looking bemused. “Well in that case,” he said.

Hal reached for his hand, held it. “I just. . . wanted to spend some time with you,” he said. “But look, if you’d rather just go upstairs, we can do that. Or something else, I don’t care.”

Bruce was still looking at him, that odd expression on his face. “Come here,” he said, and pulled Hal to him, kissing him. It was not a gentle kiss. It was one of his patented Bruce Wayne make-your-knees-go-weak, rearrange-your-insides, mouth-obliterating memory wipes that always left Hal a little dizzy and struggling to focus. Bruce’s hand was curled on the back of his neck. He leaned in to kiss Hal again, then paused.

“There’s only one chair,” he said.

“For a reason,” Hal said, and he led him to the chair, sat him down, poured him a glass of the Madeira.

“And where are you going to sit?”

“I’m not,” Hal said. He reached for the shelf behind him and pulled out a large and comfortable pillow, which he had carefully selected beforehand. And then he settled himself gingerly on the floor, between Bruce’s knees. Bruce’s eyes had gone heavy-lidded, that predatory watchful look. 

“Is that a fact,” Bruce said.

“That’s a fact babe.” And he ran his hands up Bruce’s thighs, massaging them slowly. Spreading his legs wide. “And all I want you to do, is just to lean back and enjoy some really fucking excellent wine.”

“Well it would be a shame to let the Madeira go to waste.” 

Hal kissed his thigh. “Close your eyes babe.”

“Mmm. I don’t think so. Let me watch.”

Hal kissed him again, eased his zipper down, and settled in to one of the world’s most enjoyable tasks, which was sucking Bruce Wayne’s magnificent cock. He took his time, and didn’t rush anything; he wanted Bruce to relax, and to feel every bit of this. He listened carefully to Bruce’s breathing, to its slow deepening as Hal sucked him, nuzzled him to hardness. Even when Bruce’s breath accelerated, Hal didn’t speed up. 

He had been having some success recently with deep-throating, and he tried his hand at it now. He would never be really expert, but fortunately he had brought a back-up plan, which was a tiny vial of lube in his breast pocket. 

“The indispensable accessory for a Wayne Manor benefit,” Bruce whispered, and Hal smiled, got some slick on his palm. And then he let his hand do what his throat couldn’t, and sucked him down, letting his fingers ride up and down with his mouth. He heard the moment Bruce’s head hit the back of the chair, and felt the victory of that. 

Bruce’s hand rested on his head, and Hal placed his hand on top of Bruce’s, letting him know that pressure was fine, he wanted him to press. Wanted him to fuck his mouth. Bruce’s breathing was loud in the little room now. Hal let his mouth move faster, and faster.

“Hal,” Bruce whispered. It had a very satisfying tremble to it. 

Hal’s other hand had been resting on Bruce’s thigh, but he slid it up now. Used it to brush against his balls, tease him with the hint of a little pressure. Worked a finger just behind his balls.

“Hal,” he said again, and it was closer to a groan. God, he fucking loved it when he made Bruce cum in his mouth. Loved that it was nothing but the pleasure, for Bruce. Loved feeling that beautiful body quiver and then release. Hal knew his own breathing was speeding up, that he was getting hard in his tux. But this was not about him. He could wait. Bruce’s fingers were deep in his hair now, and yes, there it was, Bruce was pressing his head hard now, and oh fuck yes, Bruce’s hips were arching up now. _That’s it, fuck my mouth,_ Hal thought. 

Bruce’s hand gave a spasmodic jerk, and his exhale was long and broken. Fuck but he loved riding Bruce’s pleasure with him. Bruce’s cum flooded his mouth, Bruce’s hips kept jerking up. Hal milked him like he was hungry for it, and he was, he so fucking was. He wanted to throw open the door of the little pantry and stand there and shout with cum running out of his mouth, _hey assholes bet you want some of this,_ only they couldn’t have it, none of them could have it, that sweet cum was his and his alone. He licked up every last drop, swallowed it like it was nectar. Breathed in the scent of Bruce’s cock, kissed and licked and nuzzled him as he tucked him back in to his pants, landing one last kiss on his thigh. 

Bruce was lying there, eyes closed, looking completely destroyed, and Hal had never been so proud of himself in his life. Then he raised his head and fixed Hal with a bleary gaze. Hal lifted his hand, the one that had rested on his head, and kissed it. The sexy thing to do would be to climb up there and straddle Bruce and kiss him senseless, but Hal knew he couldn’t make it up there, not after having been on the floor. He had prepared for the party pretty carefully – used the chair all day yesterday, just to build up his strength. He had hoped he would be able to pull off a sexy clamber up Bruce’s body, but it was not happening. He pushed down the stab of regret at that, because this was not about him. 

Bruce’s fingers were brushing the side of his face, his cheekbone. “How are you so pretty,” he said, his voice still a bit slurry, and Hal kissed his fingers. They rested there a bit. Hal couldn’t get up, but that was okay, he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay right where he was, his head resting on Bruce’s thigh, Bruce stroking his hair.

“You know what I was thinking about,” Bruce said after a while.

“Hmm.”

“I was thinking about Halloween.”

“Yeah. Kinda disappointed Damian didn’t want to dress up again this year.” He had given it his best shot, but Damian’s experience scaring candy-stealing older kids off the younger ones had been enough to turn him to the dark side of Halloween vigilante life. This October, he had made Hal drive him to the same neighborhood, but this time he lurked in side lanes and hedgerows, looking to wreak righteous vengeance on anyone who dared to bully an unattended younger child. 

_You know, Halloween is supposed to be about fun, not work,_ Hal had sighed in exasperation.

 _Oh I’m still taking the sword,_ Damian had said. 

“I meant last Halloween,” Bruce said. He was still stroking Hal. “Last year. I was thinking about it, because I think that’s when I fell in love with you.”

“Teaching your kid how to trick or treat? That’s what did it for you?”

“No,” Bruce said, and his voice still had that dreamy post-orgasm quality. “That wasn’t it. It was afterward. When I came home, and you thought I was angry. You don’t remember, probably.”

Hal shook his head, and Bruce continued. “You thought I was angry at Damian, and you put yourself in between me and him. Just slightly. It was such a small gesture, I don’t think you even knew you were doing it. Do you remember?”

“No,” Hal said. “Sorry.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. It was just. . . that’s you. If you think there’s the slightest possibility of danger, you will always put yourself in front of it.”

“Is this about not taking that assignment next week?”

“What? No. I had forgotten about that. I didn’t mean that. I just meant. . .” He brushed a knuckle against Hal’s cheek. “I don’t know what I meant.” And then he slid down to the floor next to Hal, put his arms around him. Hal kissed him then, kissed him like he had been longing to.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” Bruce whispered. 

“It’s gonna take me a while.”

“We’ve got time. Why don’t you use that time to think about what I can do for you when we get in bed, gorgeous.”

Hal gave it a tentative try, hoisting himself using Bruce’s arm. He sank back down. “Yeah, no. I think we live here now,” he said. 

“Fine by me. I think there’s enough food in here we can survive for quite some time.”

“We could pee in the mop bucket.”

“How much lube do we have?”

Hal pulled out the vial. It was three-quarters gone. “I revise my assessment, we’ll never make it,” Bruce said. Hal scooted himself so he could lean against the chair, get some support for his back. 

“You know what,” he said. “I don’t think that’s when you fell in love with me at all.”

“Oh you don’t.”

“Nah. I think it was when I asked you in a League meeting if your ass was jealous of the amount of shit that just came out of your mouth. I think that’s what did it. Or maybe it was that time I called you a vinyl-plated pissnozzle. See, ‘cause you like a little bit of mouth, don’t you.”

“I don’t think I was in the room for the pissnozzle remark. I feel like that’s one I would have remembered.”

“Huh,” said Hal, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. “Maybe so. For a while there the only way I could survive League meetings was drinking with Ollie and Barry afterward and trash talking you.”

“Lovely.”

“Oh, unbend about it, I was just pissed ‘cause you were so hot. While also being an asshole, so being around you was pretty much a constant death cage match of my most primal urges.”

“I love you,” Bruce said, and he wasn’t kidding, his eyes were level on Hal’s, his voice grave. Bruce was like that; he never said ‘I love you’ at the normal times or in the normal ways people said it. 

“I love you too,” Hal said. “You pissnozzle.”

“Please let this not be a thing.”

“Oh, it’s a thing. Now I’m thinking that all my best insults got completely wasted, when you weren’t even there to hear them. Imma call up Ollie and see if he remembers what some of my best ones were. It’s like a gift I’ve got. You really bring out the best in me, babe. I do remember this one time—” He shut his eyes and held very still. His spinal column had decided to send a white-hot lance of pain directly up his back, and this was nerve pain, so it tended to be the kind that knocked the wind out of him. Sometimes if he held very still. He opened his mouth to breathe through it, and when he opened his eyes Bruce’s eyes were there with him. 

“Sorry,” Hal whispered, and Bruce shook his head. A frequent argument these days – ‘sorry’ was what he was not supposed to say, if he got overtaken like that. 

“Come on,” Bruce said, getting to his feet. “The sooner we can reacquaint you with a mattress, the better. I’m betting we can make it to the back elevator without being seen.” He lifted Hal in one efficient motion, and Hal even successfully swallowed the moan of pain that wanted to fight its way out. He looped an arm around Bruce for support, and they headed out the door together.

“Oh hey,” Hal said. “Here’s something we should have a conversation about, which is that Scarlett Johansson just totally clocked me. Is this something we should be worried about?”

“What do you mean, clocked you?”

“Uh, in just about every possible direction. That I’m the Green Lantern, and that you are Mrs. Hal Jordan. The whole nine yards.”

“Mrs. Hal Jordan?”

“I’m not saying you have to have calling cards made. Some monogrammed stationary maybe. But yeah, that happened, earlier tonight.”

“Well, I’m not worried,” Bruce said. “I’m sure you quickly corrected her with your dazzling verbal rebuttal. Weren’t you just telling me about your rhetorical skills?”

“Okay, now you are being an actual pissnozzle.” Hal was leaning against the wall while they were waiting for the back elevator to make its slow way down from the third floor. “You’re not acting very worried about this situation.”

“Here’s what you ought to worry about,” Bruce said. His mouth was at Hal’s ear, his voice low. “All you need to be thinking about is, which way do you want to cum first tonight?”

Hal pulled him in for another kiss, and Bruce maneuvered them both in the elevator somehow. The party was still going strong on the lower floors, but it was quiet up here, and they got into their bedroom and the door locked behind them without encountering any stragglers. They fell – okay, Hal eased – onto the bed. “Be right back,” Bruce whispered, nuzzling at his neck. He disappeared into the bathroom, and Hal rolled over and quickly pulled out his phone.

 _Hey Ol,_ he texted. _You up?_

_Yeah old man I’m up, it’s not even midnight._

_Cool. Listen, two things. First, I totally forgot to tell you that the shit you said to me before, about marriage and all, was actually helpful and I’m sorry I was an asshole, and yes I probably should have updated you there a few months ago, see asshole above._

_Uh huh,_ came the reply.

_And the other thing is, I need a quick list of all my best Bruce insults._

_? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?_

_I’m serious,_ Hal wrote.

_I feel like there is a definite disconnect between the first thing and the second thing._

_It’s for science, I swear. Come on man, help me out._

_Ok ok hang on I’m working from memory here._ Ollie wrote. Not ten seconds later Hal’s screen filled with a list of gloriously inventive obscenities that kept scrolling down, and Hal’s eyes lit up. 

“Hey babe,” he called loudly. “I’m gonna get you so hot tonight. You want mouth, I’ve got some mouth for you, you. . .” He glanced at the screen. “You cream-frosted fascist cum-shart. You hose-tastic puss-douche, you.”

Bruce stuck his head out from the bathroom. “What did you just say?”

“Are you hot yet?”

“Did you overload on your meds?”

Hal gave him a devilish smirk that looked like it was just increasing Bruce’s concern for his mental well-being. The bathroom door shut again, but warily.

 _I owe you man,_ Hal texted. _I am so getting lucky tonight._

_Your relationship is a little strange. I can say that, right? I mean, you know it’s strange._

_Oh definitely._

Hal tucked the phone back under his pillow, and arranged himself on the bed in an artfully seductive manner. He tried several positions of his arms before he was satisfied. 

His night was only looking up from here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a continuation of this series found here: [A View From The Shore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19885237).


End file.
